Building an AI assistant that makes phone calls [Convex Workshop]
Feb 9, 2025 · 50:53
Tom Redmond, head of DX at Convex, builds Floyd, an AI phone-calling assistant using Convex, GPT-4, Google Cloud speech-to-text, and Twilio. Floyd lets users make voice requests (e.g., calling a school to report a sick child) via a web app; transcription, context retrieval, and real-time conversation with a human on the other end happen through a reactive database architecture. Redmond explains how Convex's WebSocket-based infrastructure solves serverless latency issues, enabling live transcript streaming and status updates without polling. He demonstrates two calls (school absence and flower order), noting that latency (2–5 seconds) comes from OpenAI text-to-speech and growing prompts, with plans to use OpenAI Threads and faster TTS services. The prototype explicitly discloses it's an AI to avoid misrepresentation, and Redmond envisions AI agents efficiently handling service bookings.
