Tavus unveils Griffin, a real-time face-to-face video model it says is the first to pass a 'video Turing test' (48% thought it was human)
Tavus announced Griffin, a full-duplex video-to-video "Human Interaction Model" that watches and listens while it talks, can interrupt and be interrupted, and reacts to gestures and objects on camera. In Tavus's own blind study, 48% of 54 participants who had a one-minute live video call with it thought they had talked to a real person (its earlier systems: at most 2%). It is a research preview, not a general release. The launch post reached about 5.4M views on X.
Key facts
- Blind study by Tavus: 54 participants, 1-minute live video calls; 48% judged Griffin human. Previous Tavus stack (Phoenix 4.5, Sparrow-2, Raven-1): max 2%
- NVIDIA VideoFDB (full-duplex video benchmark): Griffin-Lite generation score 3.83/5 vs 3.92 for the human reference and 2.80 for the next-best published system; perception 3.73
- Median response latency ~1.9 s vs ~0.9 s for the human reference (about 2.1×)
- Released as a research preview, not generally available
- Caveats: vendor-run study with a small sample and very short calls; 48% is just below the 50% a judge would score by guessing, so 'pass' depends on the definition used
What happened
Tavus, which makes conversational video avatars, introduced Griffin as a new model class for live face-to-face conversation: it perceives video and audio continuously and generates a talking video response in real time, handling overlap, interruptions and visual context (e.g. coaching a Rubik's cube solve). The headline claim comes from Tavus's own study; the VideoFDB numbers come from NVIDIA's benchmark leaderboard.
Why it matters
Real-time video avatars that half of short-call participants mistake for people move deepfake-style capability into live, interactive settings: customer service and tutoring, but also fraud and impersonation on video calls. The evidence so far is vendor-reported and based on one-minute calls.
Changelog
- 2026-10-02: created (reported by the site owner; 5.4M-view launch post)
Models
- Tavus Griffin (Human Interaction Model) Tavus · preview
Related posts (1)
- Tavus: 'Introducing Griffin, the first model to pass the video Turing test' original ↗ Tavus @tavus · x · 2026-10-01
Launch post for Griffin (~5.4M views): claims 48% of people on a live call thought it was human.
Related events
Sources (6)
- officialTavus: Griffin, the first Human Interaction Model
- officialBusiness Wire (via Yahoo Finance): Tavus introduces Griffin
- discussionTavus on X: launch post (~5.4M views)
- presstech-ish: Nearly half of people on a video call with Griffin thought they were talking to a human
- pressCrypto Briefing: Tavus unveils Griffin, claiming the first video Turing test pass
- pressKingy AI: Tavus Griffin specs, benchmarks, costs and availability
id: 2026-10-01-tavus-griffin-video-turing-test · updated 2026-10-02 · open in the interactive timeline