Twilio Unveils Integration with OpenAI’s Realtime API for Developing Conversational AI Applications

Twilio, the customer engagement platform that enables real-time, personalized experiences for leading brands, has announced an integration with OpenAI to incorporate the company’s new Realtime API into the Twilio platform. This integration of streaming speech-to-speech (S2S) capabilities—part of the Realtime API—will empower over 300,000 Twilio customers and more than 10 million developers to create robust conversational AI virtual agents using OpenAI’s flagship multilingual and multimodal GPT-4o model.

This new integration builds on previous collaborations between OpenAI and Twilio, announced last year, to harness the power of large language models (LLMs) within the customer engagement platform.

“Integrating OpenAI’s Realtime API with Twilio’s platform enables businesses to offer more natural, real-time AI voice interactions at scale,” said Inbal Shani, Chief Product Officer, Twilio Communications. “Businesses can use this to create voice experiences that feel more human and can reduce operational costs and drive higher customer satisfaction.”

Speech-to-speech technology is an emerging innovation that enables AI virtual agents to engage in voice conversations that closely resemble real human dialogue. OpenAI’s Realtime API minimizes latency and incorporates essential elements such as conversation pacing, interruption management, tone, and the balance between speaking and listening—factors that are crucial for creating an optimal customer experience.

“The Realtime API’s speech-to-speech capabilities are designed to address strong customer demand for conversational AI solutions,” said Olivier Godement, Head of Product, API at OpenAI. “We’re thrilled to collaborate with Twilio to deliver a world class developer experience for building and deploying conversational AI agents.”  

This technology is particularly significant for customer service and sales, providing both operational efficiency and outstanding customer outcomes. Speech-to-speech capabilities are also expected to have a social impact on a large scale, enabling nonprofit and public sector organizations to implement innovative applications such as real-time voice translation between constituents and staff who speak different languages.

Businesses can integrate these capabilities into Twilio's customer engagement platform, allowing them to incorporate conversational AI virtual agents into their workflows just like any other voice interaction. Previously, developers had to combine multiple vendors and solutions to create and deploy these agents.

With Twilio's native integration of OpenAI's Realtime API and its speech-to-speech capabilities, companies can build, deploy, and serve customers with virtual agents on a single platform. By utilizing Twilio's scalable voice APIs and software, developers can access advanced features to record calls, analyze performance and analytics, and gain insights with AI operators. The interactions with virtual agents can then be leveraged as data to enhance operational efficiency and facilitate personalization at scale.

Twilio is dedicated to safeguarding customers against new and emerging challenges posed by this technology, such as deep fakes, voice-based prompt injections, and other potential threats. As the understanding of these risks develops and solutions emerge, Twilio is committed to further integrating these capabilities into its platform, including an upcoming integration with Twilio Alpha’s AI Assistants.