# Runway — Building Real-Time Video Agent from a Single Image with Runway Characters

- Company: Runway (runway.com)
- Announced: 2026-05-04
- Category: not stated
- Coverage: not counted
- Announcement: no
- Group: routine
- Source: https://runway.com/news/engineering/building-runway-characters
- Record: https://forck.live/items/7887-building-real-time-video-agent-from-a-single-image-with-runway-characters
- Subject: Gen / Aleph
- Models affected: GWM-1

Runway announced Runway Characters, a real-time video agent that transforms a single reference image into a conversational video character at 24fps with low latency. It is built on the GWM-1 model and requires no fine-tuning. The system achieves 37ms model time per frame and 1.75 seconds server-side turn-around.

## Evidence

Verbatim from https://runway.com/news/engineering/building-runway-characters:

> Runway Characters is a real-time video agent that turns a single reference image into a fully expressive, conversational video character. Built on GWM-1, our General World Model, it produces natural lip-sync, facial expressions and head motions at 24 frames per second (fps) in HD.

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Record: https://forck.live/items/7887-building-real-time-video-agent-from-a-single-image-with-runway-characters
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