In June 2025, Gabriel Skantze, a leading expert in conversational AI and co-founder of Furhat Robotics, shared exciting advancements in creating natural, face-to-face conversations between humans and robots. His work focuses on improving how AI employees and Voice AI Agents interact with people by incorporating human-like verbal and non-verbal communication cues, such as tone, timing, and turn-taking.
Traditional voice AI systems often struggle with timing their responses, leading to unnatural silences or talking over people. Skantze and his team developed new models—like TurnGPT and Voice Activity Projection (VAP)—trained on real human dialogues. These models help non-human workers anticipate when to speak or listen, making conversations flow much more smoothly.
Improved conversational abilities mean AI employees can better serve roles in customer service, healthcare, and education. By sounding and responding more naturally, Voice AI Agents become more effective and engaging, fostering better communication and user satisfaction. Experiments with the Furhat robot demonstrated clear user preference for these enhanced conversations, proving the potential impact of this technology.
As non-human workers become more capable of fluid, natural dialogue, we can expect wider adoption of AI employees across industries. This breakthrough represents an important step toward seamless human-AI collaboration, changing how we interact with technology daily.
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Reference:
https://robohub.org/robot-talk-episode-125-chatting-with-robots-with-gabriel-skantze/