Tolan: Voice-First AI Companion — Paula Dozsa, Tolan
Tolan is a voice-based AI companion shaped as a small alien, with over four million hours of conversation data logged.
Paula Dozsa, an engineer on the iOS app, explains that voice fundamentally changes how you build AI apps compared to text chat: voice requires faster responses, handles interruptions and topic-jumping, and tiny delays — even half a second — make users perceive it as slow. The team measures every pipeline stage separately, routes conversations based on emotional stakes (new users get stronger models), compresses memory nightly to merge duplicates, and rebuilds context from parts each turn instead of reusing it.
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