Google DeepMind releases Gemini 3.8 Live audio models
Google DeepMind released Gemini 3.8 Live and Gemini 3.8 Live Extended Thinking, two new speech-to-speech audio models for developers. The models reportedly lead the Artificial Analysis speech-to-speech leaderboard and are offered at $1.38 per hour of voice conversation to undercut OpenAI's GPT-Live-1. Claims are as reported; this summary makes no determination about accuracy or significance.
- First detected
- Sep 15, 2026
- Last updated
- Sep 16, 2026
High confidence
Reported by the organization responsible for the announcement and independently covered by another publisher.
Strongly corroborated
Corroborated across 2 independent sources
What does this mean?
Corroboration measures how many genuinely independent sources support the event. Confidence measures how reliable the available evidence appears.
No material changes recently.
Stable
No recent reporting has materially changed the known facts.
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Why it matters
The release reflects Google's continued architectural focus on real-time interaction and multi-step reasoning capabilities in frontier models. Developers and enterprise evaluators will need to assess operational costs, inference latency, and API availability as comprehensive benchmark data and documentation are published.
Coverage
Primary source
Primary/vendor sources vs independent reporting
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Timeline
Oct 1, 2026
Development status changed
Developing → Stable — new reporting is no longer substantially changing the known facts
Sep 16, 2026
Corroboration updated
The set of supporting sources changed.
Development status changed
New → Developing — new reporting is still materially changing this development
Sep 15, 2026
New reporting added
Google’s new speech model Gemini 3.8 Live supports real-time reasoningSiliconANGLEIndependent reporting
Development detected
New reporting added
Google launches Gemini 3.8 Live to take on OpenAI's GPT-Live-1 at a fraction of the costThe DecoderIndependent reporting
New reporting added
Introducing Gemini 3.8 Live and 3.8 Live Extended ThinkingGoogle DeepMindPrimary source
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