December 16, 2025
I've been playing with the new Lemon Slice realtime video avatar model that launched today. Here's a clip of a couple of avatars I created: a cartoon astronaut and a guide for the space game side project I've been hacking on.
The guide avatar supports the Lemon Slice /imagine command, which changes the video on the fly. You can see my type "/imagine a working space suit with tools and velcro patches and stuff" and see what the Lemon Slice model does with that prompt!
The idea for the astronaut character was to create something that felt like a fully realized cartoon animation. I used Nano Banana to create the character image, then used that image as the basis for the Lemon Slice avatar. I'm a big fan of models that can do cartoon and non-photorealistic avatars really well. I think there's a lot of interesting terrain to explore in this direction and would love to see talented designers create environments that emphasize imagination rather than "virtual reality."
For the second character, I fired up Claude Code in the repo for the Gradient Bang game, and asked it to create an LLM prompt for a guide for newbies:
> Create a prompt for an LLM that will guide new players in the Gradient Bang game universe. Include basics about the game, and good strategies for players who are just starting out. Include enough detail that you can answer questions about game mechanics and strategy. Make the prompt about 15 paragraphis long.
Lots more information about what the model can do, in the launch thread below ...
Launch thread from Lemon Slice co-founder @lina_colucci:
https://t.co/FfTvfLHiZG
Lina Colucci@lina_colucciGive your voice agents a face.
Introducing Lemon Slice-2 – the world's first interactive talking AI video model
Think of it as a face layer for your voice agents, available today in production as an API or an embeddable widget.
What makes Lemon Slice-2 great:
→ Easy: All you
