Google shipped two live audio models — a cheap, fast conversational tier and a reasoning-heavy "Extended Thinking" variant that thinks and speaks at the same time — aimed at natural voice agents rather than turn-based assistants.
2026-09-15 · by Moe Ameen
Published 2026-09-15 · Updated
Short answer
Gemini 3.8 Live and Gemini 3.8 Live Extended Thinking are Google's real-time voice models, launched September 15, 2026. Both talk while they run tools in the background, react to a live camera or screen feed, and switch between 97 languages mid-conversation. Google's API pricing page lists the same rate for both: $0.005 per minute of input audio. They hold a conversation, but they do not produce videos or posts.
Key takeaways
Google announced Gemini 3.8 Live and Gemini 3.8 Live Extended Thinking on September 15, 2026 — two live audio models built for real-time, spoken interaction rather than typed prompts. The pitch is voice agents that feel like a conversation: the models listen and respond in the flow of dialogue, and can run tool and API calls in the background while they keep talking, so there's no dead air while something loads.
The two variants split by job. Gemini 3.8 Live is the scale-and-cost tier — tuned for fluid dialogue and "visual grounding," meaning it can take in a live camera or screen feed and reason about what it sees in near real time. Gemini 3.8 Live Extended Thinking is the higher-intelligence tier for multi-step tasks: Google says it reasons and speaks simultaneously, offering early verbal cues like "Let me check that…" and narrating progress out loud while a background task runs. Both models can automatically detect and switch between 97 languages mid-conversation.
Google leaned on benchmarks to make a price-and-performance case. It reports Extended Thinking topping Artificial Analysis' Speech-to-Speech Quality Index at 82.6, ahead of rival voice models, with strong agentic scores on the τ-Voice benchmark. On price, Google's Gemini API pricing page lists the same rates for both models: $0.005 per minute of input audio (about $0.30 an hour) and $0.018 per minute of output audio. Treat the benchmark figures as vendor-reported until independent testing lands, and confirm live pricing in the Gemini API docs. All AI-generated audio carries SynthID watermarking.
Availability rolled out the same day: developers get both models through the Gemini API and Google AI Studio; enterprises via a private preview in Gemini Enterprise; and general users through Search Live, Gemini Live, and Extended Thinking inside Google Docs for AI Pro and Ultra subscribers and inside Gmail and Keep for all Google AI subscribers. The honest creator framing: this is a conversational interface, not a content-production tool — it holds a great spoken exchange, but it exports no captioned video, carousel, blog, or scheduled post.
The reason a cheaper, more natural voice model matters to a creator isn't the conversation — it's the capture. Gemini 3.8 Live is the fastest way yet to get an idea out of your head: talk through a hook while you're driving, hold your phone up to a product and narrate the angle, let it switch to Spanish mid-sentence for a bilingual audience. What you walk away with is a transcript and a sharper take. That's exactly where Kompozy begins. Paste the transcript or the tightened angle into Quick Ingest and one spoken brainstorm fans out into a full week: a Blog Article, brand-exact Carousel Posts and Quote Graphics via HyperFrames, native Text Posts, and an Email Newsletter — every piece rewritten to your voice by the Persona Brief and banned-word filters, so a rambling voice note reads as your brand rather than a raw dictation.
Then Kompozy does the two things a voice model structurally can't. It generates the video: Persona Shorts and HeyGen avatar clips that put a face-locked, recurring on-camera identity in front of the script you just dictated, plus Clipped Shorts if you already have footage. And it publishes: the whole set is scheduled and fanned across the eight social platforms plus blog and email through Autopilot, behind a per-post review gate. Say the idea into Gemini 3.8 Live; ship it everywhere with Kompozy.
This AI avatar video came straight out of the Kompozy workspace. It is here to show the format, not this news item.
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Gemini 3.8 Live is a Google live audio model announced September 15, 2026 for real-time spoken interaction — fluid dialogue, visual grounding (reasoning about a live camera or screen feed in near real time), and the ability to run tool and API calls in the background while it keeps talking. It ships alongside a higher-reasoning variant, 3.8 Live Extended Thinking.
Extended Thinking is the higher-intelligence tier for multi-step tasks. Google says it reasons and speaks at the same time, gives early verbal cues like "Let me check that…," and narrates progress while a background task runs. Google's API pricing page lists it at the same per-minute audio rates as the base 3.8 Live model.
No. It is a conversational voice interface — it talks, reasons, sees, and can run tools in the background, but it produces no captioned video, carousel, blog, newsletter, or scheduled post. To turn a spoken idea or transcript into finished, on-brand posts across platforms, you run it through a content engine like Kompozy.
Google's Gemini API pricing page lists the same rates for both models: $0.005 per minute of input audio (about $0.30 an hour) and $0.018 per minute of output audio, plus a free tier for testing. The announcement itself named no price, so check the pricing page for current rates.
We checked every date, figure and product claim on this page against the sources listed below on 2026-10-23, and rewrote or removed anything they did not support. Model details come from Google's announcement, and the prices come from Google's Gemini API pricing page, which replaced a third-party estimate this page used to quote. Kompozy plan and format details come from kompozy.io/pricing.
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