What happened
Google released gemini-3.8-flash-tts and gemini-3.8-flash-lite-tts, offering over 2,000 voices and custom voice creation from a 30-second audio sample.
Why it matters
Two new voice models give users a wider choice of voices and make it easier to create a custom voice with only a short sample, which could help developers build more natural-sounding applications.
What to watch
The cost and speed trade-offs between the standard and Flash-Lite versions will determine which one developers pick. In a demo, generating 1m 18s of audio with Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS took about 20 seconds and cost 2.74 cents.
WHO IT HITSDevelopers and product teams building voice-enabled apps now have two cheaper Gemini TTS options with over 2,000 voices and a quick custom-voice path, which may lower the barrier to adding natural speech to their products.
Summaries like this, in your inbox every morning.
Google's introduction of two new text-to-speech models, gemini-3.8-flash-tts and gemini-3.8-flash-lite-tts, expands its Gemini lineup with options for both standard and lighter-weight speech synthesis. The models ship with a library of over 2,000 voices and allow users to create a custom voice from just a 30-second audio sample, which could make personalized voice generation more accessible.
A key feature is the ability to define multi-speaker conversations with different voices and style instructions, as shown in a demo where two pelicans debate moving to the Pacifica Pier. That demo used Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS (not the cheaper Flash-Lite) and took about 20 seconds to generate 1m 18s of audio at a cost of 2.74 cents, suggesting a potentially practical balance of speed and price for developers.
The real test will be whether the Flash-Lite version delivers acceptable quality at a lower cost, and how developers weigh the trade-offs between the two models for their applications.
For example, today's edition would include:
AI-summarized, only the topics you pick: one digest a day via Email, LINE, or Slack.
Free · 30 seconds with Google · unsubscribe anytimeWhat is AIToday? →
Ask AI anything about this article. The AI reads this article, earlier AIToday articles, and Wikipedia, and cites its sources. Q&As are published on this page for other readers too.
Microsoft said the rebuilt Microsoft Copilot app is built on three tabs — Home, Code and Autopilot — with "Off…
Google DeepMind chief Koray Kavukcuoglu said Gemini 4 has entered post-training and Google intends to ship an…
CrowdStrike Holdings (NasdaqGS:CRWD) became a founding member of the Blueprint Alliance, joined by AWS, Google…
At Dreamforce 2026, Salesforce presented an agentic health enterprise, citing UCLA Health's 75,000+ patient in…
Microsoft launched an updated Copilot app that can code and handle productivity tasks, replacing separate 365…
AdverTimes (AdverTimes by Sendenkaigi) compared how people in Japan and the U.S
