Google has given Gemini 3.8 Live a face that can lip-sync, react, and use tools in the background

Live Avatar is available in Gemini Enterprise for customer service, walkthroughs, and other interactive experience.

By Sudhanshu Kumar Mangalam Published September 25, 2026

Google

Google is giving Gemini Live a face. The company has introduced Gemini 3.8 Live with Live Avatar, pairing its conversational AI with near real-time generated video that can listen, see, speak, and react through an animated visual persona.

The update comes barely a week after Google launched Gemini 3.8 Live and Live Extended Thinking on September 15. Those models focused on stronger reasoning, better visual understanding, and background tool execution. Live Avatar takes the same foundation and adds a visual layer, although Google is keeping it inside Gemini Enterprise for now.

Gemini can now look the part too

Live Avatar is designed to make AI conversations feel closer to talking with an actual person on a video call. The avatar can lip-sync to generated speech, use facial expressions, and respond without awkward pauses between turns.

Gemini 3.8 Live with Live Avatar

talks, lip syncs, switches 97 languages mid convo

Enterprise users only for now

This is one of the official demo video: pic.twitter.com/jmswxB7tgL
— Harshith (@HarshithLucky3) September 24, 2026

Google expects the feature to be used by companies for customer service, interactive walkthroughs, and other situations where a voice floating out of a speaker may not quite cut it. The system processes visual and audio information together, giving the agent more context about what is happening during a conversation. Language support is fairly broad, with 97 languages, adjusting its speech, lip movements, and expressions along the way without Google saying users need to restart the conversation.

Recommended Videos

There are many avatar options to choose from as Google offers a library of preset avatars, while approved enterprise customers can create custom ones from a reference image. Those custom avatars can preserve the original likeness, visual style, or character identity.

The avatar is more than a talking face

Live Avatar can still call tools and fetch information in the background while the conversation continues. An enterprise agent could, for example, look something up or trigger a connected service without freezing the avatar on screen while everyone waits for an answer.

Gemini 3.8 Live with Live Avatar is available now through Gemini Enterprise. Google says generated audio and video carry SynthID watermarking, while custom avatar creation remains limited to businesses granted access.

Sudhanshu Kumar Mangalam

Contributor

Sudhanshu Kumar Manglam is a tech journalist at Digital Trends, where he covers consumer technology, science, and games.

Topics

Computing

AI agents are acting like rogues and causing a huge headache for US banks

US banks block AI agents over fears they could make unauthorised financial moves

Banking

US banks are facing a new kind of digital headache: artificial intelligence agents attempting to access customer accounts and perform actions that may go beyond what users intended. As AI tools become more capable of navigating websites and carrying out tasks independently, financial institutions are scrambling to prevent them from crossing security boundaries.

According to a report published by Axios on October 22, major US banks have detected third-party AI agents operating inside customer accounts without authorisation. Some agents reportedly appeared to attempt actions independently of user instructions. The banks involved have not publicly detailed every incident, and there is no evidence that the reported activity resulted in widespread theft of customer funds.

Computing

Canva enters the AI image generation race with Craft, and it’s thinking beyond pretty pictures

The new model plans layouts before generating images, with precise editing and support for 30 aspect ratios.

Canva Craft Featured Image

AI can generate all kinds of pretty pictures, but getting it to spell a headline correctly or keep a poster's layout intact can be another story. Canva wants to fix that with Canva Craft, its first in-house image generation model. Rather than focusing primarily on photographs, Craft is designed around the posters, presentations, social media graphics, and other visual content people actually create. The goal is simple: spend less time fixing AI's mistakes and more time making something useful.

Canva Craft plans before it generates

Computing

Mori might be the cutest AI companion robot yet, and it reacts to you like a pet

The Pokémon-like companion can blink, dance, act shy, and respond to what is happening around it.

OKA Mori The Nature Companion AI Home Robot

With AI progressing so fast, it's only a matter of time before we start getting AI companions like the ones we used to see in movies like R2-D2, Wall-E, or Baymax. Now, Singapore-based OKA Technology has unveiled Mori, a cute little AI companion that looks less like a conventional home robot and more like someone turned the Pokémon Foongus into a table lamp.

Mori isn't meant to clean your house or control your smart home, but to serve as what OKA calls a "Nature Companion." It uses subtle movements, warm lighting, nature-inspired sounds, and small reactions to make its presence around the house feel calming rather than distracting. Mori can sit quietly while you read, sway along to music, welcome you when you enter a room, or encourage you to slow down for a moment without requiring a screen or a conversation.