--- title: "Introducing Gemini 3.8 Live and 3.8 Live Extended Thinking" author: "Arpan Singh" published: "2026-09-16T06:02:21.398Z" updated: "2026-09-16T06:06:24.324Z" url: "https://zyvop.com/introducing-gemini-3-8-live-and-3-8-live-extended-thinking-kd69g" canonical: "https://zyvop.com/introducing-gemini-3-8-live-and-3-8-live-extended-thinking-kd69g" tags: ["Gemini","Google DeepMind","voice AI","Gemini 3.8 Live and 3.8 Live Extended Thinking"] --- # Introducing Gemini 3.8 Live and 3.8 Live Extended Thinking Google's most advanced live-dialogue AI yet, with background reasoning, visual grounding, and real-time multilingual voice support. ![Cover image]() Google [announced]() two new voice-first AI models on **September 15, 2026**: **Gemini 3.8 Live** and **Gemini 3.8 Live Extended Thinking**, its most capable live-dialogue models yet. Both are native speech-to-speech models built on Gemini 3 Pro, meaning audio goes in and audio comes out directly instead of routing through separate speech-recognition, language, and text-to-speech systems. The pitch is simple: a voice agent that can think, act, and keep talking, all at once. ## Two models, two jobs Google split the release into two models with clearly different jobs: | | Gemini 3.8 Live | Gemini 3.8 Live Extended Thinking | | --- | --- | --- | | **Built for** | Scale and cost efficiency | High-complexity, multi-step tasks | | **Strengths** | Fluid dialogue, visual grounding, fast responses | Deeper reasoning, background tool orchestration | | **Best for** | High-volume, everyday voice interactions | Agentic workflows, coding, multi-step bookings | ## What's actually new The headline feature is **background reasoning**: instead of going silent while it works something out, Extended Thinking acknowledges a request verbally, keeps the conversation moving while it reasons and calls tools in the background, then narrates its progress as the task completes. Live adds its own tricks: **near real-time visual grounding** from a camera or screen share, **automatic language switching across 97 languages** mid-conversation, and background tool execution that doesn't interrupt the chat. Google's demos show the models guiding onboarding with live visual context, playing chess by watching a physical board, and turning hand-drawn sketches into working React components through voice feedback. ## Specs, benchmarks, and limits Per the [Gemini 3.8 Audio model card](), both models accept audio, image, video, and text input (**128,000-token** context) and produce audio and text output (**64,000-token** ceiling). Known limitations: they can hallucinate, occasionally time out, and their knowledge cutoff is **January 2025**. On Google's own benchmarks, Extended Thinking takes the #1 spot on [Artificial Analysis' Speech-to-Speech Quality Index]() at **82.6**, leads agentic task completion at **68.6%** on τ-Voice, and scores **97.7%** on Big Bench Audio. Standard Live placed second in the Speech Agent Arena, the cheaper, higher-volume sibling of the two. Treat these as a starting point, not the final word. Independent benchmarking will follow, as it usually does after a launch like this. ## Pricing and availability On the standard Gemini API tier: | | Per 1M tokens | Per minute | | --- | --- | --- | | Audio input | $3.00 | ~$0.005 | | Audio output | $12.00 | ~$0.018 | A free tier is available to get started. (Check [Google's pricing page]() for current rates, since introductory-pricing windows shift.) Both models are rolling out now. Developers get them via the [Gemini API]() and [Google AI Studio](); enterprises get private-preview access through Gemini Enterprise; and everyday users will find Live in Search Live and Extended Thinking in the Gemini Live app, plus Docs, Gmail, and Keep for eligible subscribers. ## Ecosystem and safety Voice infrastructure providers like LiveKit, LangChain, and Vercel already support the Gemini Live API, and early enterprise partners include Salesforce, Genspark, and Lumeris. Every audio clip carries a [SynthID]() watermark for provenance, and Google's frontier-safety assessment found no new capability thresholds crossed relative to Gemini 3.7 Flash. ## The bigger picture The real story here isn't the benchmark scores. It's the UX pattern: a model that acknowledges a request out loud and narrates its own background work solves the "does it actually understand me" anxiety that's dogged voice assistants for years. That's my read, not Google's: every voice-assistant builder, OpenAI included, has run into the same latency-versus-reasoning wall, and whichever one makes "thinking out loud" feel natural instead of gimmicky wins the next round. It's a UX bet worth watching more closely than any single benchmark number. * * * _Sources: Google's_ [_official announcement_]() _and the_ [_Gemini 3.8 Audio model card_]()_, both published September 15, 2026, plus the_ [_Gemini API pricing documentation_]()_._