Gemini 3.8 Live tops speech quality index while reasoning and talking at once
Gemini 3.8 Live and 3.8 Live Extended Thinking
Google's new Gemini 3.8 Live and 3.8 Live Extended Thinking models bring near real-time reasoning to voice agents. Extended Thinking captures the #1 spot on Artificial Analysis' Speech to Speech Quality Index with 82.6 and hits 68.6% on τ-Voice, while Live offers cost-efficient, visual grounding and switches between 97 languages mid-conversation. Both roll out today via the Gemini API, AI Studio, Search Live, and Gemini Enterprise.
For tasks that require deeper reasoning, 3.8 Live Extended Thinking reasons and speaks simultaneously.
- jeanbza
My first language is Afrikaans, which is a somewhat niche language and hard to find teachers/conversation buddies outside South Africa. (I live in USA now)
I've been using Gemini to live chat in Afrikaans and do impromptu Afrikaans grammar lessons during my solo drives around town. It is phenomenal at speaking the language - like, it really shocks my family members when they hear it.
This is probably the most joy I get from any of my usages of LLMs/AIs. It's been really, really nice getting to speak my language regularly again. =)
So, I'm excited about this release and live chat getting better. I also hope the other frontier labs pick up niche languages like this as well so that I have more options.
- Zsfe510asG
Gemini is underrated in that it produces the only prose that is somewhat bearable to read.
- Havoc
Just gave it a try - very solid release.
Copes well with thick accent, voices are pleasant and latency seems low.
Oh and I can actually use it on a workspace account - which for most of the recent releases was an account stuck in limbo. Not personal enough for personal offering, not enterprise enough for enterprise.
Well done G - will definitely be using this
- rdtsc
I wonder when/if we’ll see Gemini beating Fable and Astra. Last year I would have confidently bet Google will overtake the others just because they have the data, the hardware (TPUs) and a fat advertising money pipe and yet they are still behind. Anyone anonymous at Google want to hint when Gemini 4 will be out?
- svcrunch
If you'd like to experiment with Gemini 3.8 Live on a US telephone number, you can try Wokay [0]. It's an agentic memory demonstration that's built with LiveKit and Gemini. Tel: 408–897–4019
- doodlesdev
Gemini's Live Mode is already much better than GPT Voice in my personal experience, even though it was much dumber. It really does feel like talking to a real person. ChatGPT keeps humming to whatever I say and has some weird voices.
Excited to try this out! Shame on Google for not releasing Gemini 3.8 for Google AI Plus users yet, though.
- deviation
Not a great impression to have your demo video demonstrate how one of your 'most advanced' AI models loses to the most common check-mate pattern in all of chess.
- sahaskatta
Our company's Google Workspace Business only offers 3.6 flash & thinking in the Gemini App. Has anyone else seen 3.7 or 3.8 roll out?