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April 22nd, 2025

Rasa Announces Twilio Media Streams Connector for Seamless Voice AI Integration

  • portrait of Kara Hartnett

    Kara Hartnett

Rasa, the leading conversational AI platform, has introduced a new Twilio Media Streams connector, expanding the options for enterprises to integrate their AI assistants into voice channels. Many organizations rely on Twilio’s infrastructure for messaging and voice, making this integration an important addition for businesses looking to enhance their conversational AI capabilities.

The Twilio Media Streams connector allows companies to connect Rasa-powered assistants to Twilio’s voice-streaming capabilities, giving them more control over the ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) and TTS (Text-to-Speech) engines used in voice interactions. This update provides a more natural-sounding voice experience and enables enterprises to deploy flexible, scalable voice AI assistants with minimal friction.

"Twilio is a go-to solution for teams looking to quickly set up a phone number and connect a chat or voice assistant," said Mike Gessel, Head of Partnerships at Rasa. "With our Twilio Media Streams connector, businesses now have even more options for customizing and optimizing their voice AI experience."

Expanding Voice AI Capabilities with Twilio

The release of the Twilio Media Streams connector builds on Rasa’s commitment to open, flexible integrations. Twilio is widely used by small and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises running proof-of-concept (PoC) AI assistants before transitioning to direct channel integrations for production. By supporting Twilio Voice, Twilio Messaging, and Twilio Media Streams, Rasa ensures businesses can seamlessly deploy AI assistants across multiple channels.

Key features of the Twilio Media Streams connector:

  • Customizable ASR/TTS engines: Allows voice designers to swap speech recognition and text-to-speech providers without modifying the core integration.
  • Built on WebSockets: Ensures low-latency, real-time streaming for smooth interactions.
  • Call state tracking: Manages who is speaking, when to pause for input, and how to handle unresponsive users, creating a more natural voice experience.
  • Custom extensibility: Advanced users can modify the integration to connect with proprietary speech recognition or TTS systems.

Solving Key Challenges in Voice AI

Voice AI adoption has grown, but many businesses still face limitations when integrating AI-powered assistants into their existing telephony systems. Traditional Twilio Voice integrations offer limited text-to-speech voices, leading to robotic-sounding responses. Twilio Media Streams gives businesses full control over their speech pipeline, ensuring a more natural, high-quality voice experience.

Businesses can further enhance their voice AI deployments by leveraging CALM (Conversational AI with Language Models). CALM ensures assistants handle complex dialogue patterns, topic shifts, and clarifications while keeping conversations fluent and predictable. This integration enables companies to connect their Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) platforms to Rasa, unlocking the full potential of AI-powered voice interactions.

Seamless Setup and Deployment

Setting up the Twilio Media Streams connector is simple. Organizations need:

  • A Twilio account
  • A Twilio phone number
  • A deployed instance of Rasa Pro

Once configured, users set up the Twilio webhook to establish real-time communication between their Rasa assistant and Twilio’s infrastructure. Full setup documentation is available here: Twilio Media Streams Documentation.

Broad Industry Applications

The Twilio Media Streams integration is cross-vertical, meaning it can be applied to any industry looking to implement voice AI, including:

  • Customer support: Automating inbound calls while escalating complex issues to human agents.
  • Financial services: Enabling secure voice interactions for banking and payments.
  • Healthcare: Assisting with patient inquiries, appointment scheduling, and automated reminders.
  • Retail and e-commerce: Powering AI-driven customer service hotlines for order status and returns.

Talk to Sales to Get Started

Ready to explore how Rasa’s AI assistants can enhance your voice experiences? Talk to our sales team today to learn how to deploy AI-powered voice assistants that fit your business needs.