{"slug": "geminis-live-avatar-puts-a-face-on-its-ai-agent-its-freaking-me-out", "title": "Gemini’s Live Avatar Puts a Face on Its AI Agent. It’s Freaking Me Out", "summary": "Google made its Live Avatar feature available to Gemini Enterprise customers, letting businesses pair a conversational AI agent with a selectable visual avatar that lip-synchs to the agent's voice and processes live audio, screen sharing and video feeds simultaneously. The feature, announced days after Google unveiled Gemini 3.8 Live and Gemini 3.8 Live Extended Thinking, can run tools and API calls mid-conversation and uses native speech-to-speech for interruption recovery; Google said custom avatars require a verification process and all audio and video are watermarked with SynthID. Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment on general-public availability or how it plans to safeguard information the AI agent receives during video calls.", "body_md": "I’ve noticed a lot more businesses using AI agents to process customer support requests. But now it’s getting weird.\n\nGoogle’s Live Avatar feature is now available for those with Gemini Enterprise. This comes days after Google announced Gemini 3.8 Live and Gemini 3.8 Live Extended Thinking.\n\nWhat exactly is Live Avatar? It combines an interactive visual experience with a conversational AI agent to do things like filing insurance claims through a video chat — which was Google’s example in its announcement. Businesses or those with Google Enterprise can choose from a few avatars to put a face to an AI agent’s voice.\n\nMore from CNET\n\nLive Avatar seems pretty handy for businesses. It can create live video avatars with lip synching for conversational videos and process live audio, screen sharing and video feeds simultaneously. Live Avatar can run tools and API calls while continuing conversations with customers. But imagine a cartoon or realistic-looking avatar’s lips moving to match the bot’s voice to handle your request. Creepy.\n\nLive Avatar also aims to create more fluid dialogue with native speech-to-speech for “more natural interruption recovery without dropping conversation context or backend transactions.”\n\nGoogle didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on when it will be available to the general public or how it plans to safeguard the information the AI agent receives during video calls (like, in the insurance example, your address, name and live video when filing a claim).\n\nGoogle has a few safeguards in place to prevent misuse, like choosing from curated, prebuilt avatars. If you want to create a custom avatar, you’ll have to go through a verification process, Google’s announcement says. All audio and video are watermarked with SynthID to keep all AI content verifiable.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/geminis-live-avatar-puts-a-face-on-its-ai-agent-its-freaking-me-out", "canonical_source": "https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/geminis-live-avatar-puts-a-face-on-its-ai-agent-its-freaking-me-out/", "published_at": "2026-09-25 18:01:59+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-09-25 18:31:27.693741+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-agents", "generative-ai", "ai-products"], "entities": ["Google", "Gemini Enterprise", "Live Avatar", "Gemini 3.8 Live", "Gemini 3.8 Live Extended Thinking", "SynthID", "CNET"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/geminis-live-avatar-puts-a-face-on-its-ai-agent-its-freaking-me-out", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/geminis-live-avatar-puts-a-face-on-its-ai-agent-its-freaking-me-out.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/geminis-live-avatar-puts-a-face-on-its-ai-agent-its-freaking-me-out.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/geminis-live-avatar-puts-a-face-on-its-ai-agent-its-freaking-me-out.jsonld"}}