Voice agents have a latency problem that shows up as soon as they have to do real work. Within five days, Google and OpenAI shipped two very different fixes.
On Tuesday, Google launched Gemini 3.8 Live and Gemini 3.8 Live Extended Thinking through the Gemini API and Google AI Studio, just five days after OpenAI released GPT-Live-1. Both let a voice agent keep talking while it works in the background, but they go about it very differently.
Gemini 3.8 Live Extended Thinking keeps reasoning inside the voice model, letting it continue speaking while it executes asynchronous tool calls. OpenAI separates those jobs, using GPT-Live-1 for the real-time conversation while a backend reasoning model handles complex tasks — pushing more orchestration into the application layer.
Google cautions against treating that split as a direct comparison between Gemini and products like ChatGPT or Claude Voice.
“Today’s models are more centered on giving developers/enterprises tools to build voice agents,” a Google spokesperson tells The New Stack. “ChatGPT and Claude voice mode are full products rather than models, so the comparison is not apples-to-apples.”
“ChatGPT and Claude voice mode are full products rather than models, so the comparison is not apples-to-apples.”
Gemini 3.8 Live Extended Thinking keeps speech, reasoning, and tool execution inside a single stateful session, even while external API calls are still running.
When a function is set to NON_BLOCKING , Gemini can keep talking while it waits for the tool to respond, asking follow-up questions or giving updates along the way.
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