Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab Unveils 'Interaction Models' — Full-Duplex AI With 0.40s Turn-Taking Latency

Thinking Machines Lab·high signal

Thinking Machines Lab, founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, announced a research preview of 'interaction models' — a new class of multimodal AI that processes audio, video, and text simultaneously with 0.40-second turn-taking latency (matching natural human conversation). The system uses a novel 'encoder-free early fusion' technique that processes raw signals through lightweight embedding layers instead of heavy external encoders. Models are natively time-aware, enabling time-sensitive industrial and research applications. This is a direct challenge to the turn-based conversation paradigm of every major AI lab.