Voice AI Research

Week 2026-W35
6announcements

Daily / Pipecat@pipecat_ai 2 in corpus · first 2026-08-27

2026-08-27 · 2026-W35 · platform · launch · PhoneLLM Alpha 1

Pipecat releases PhoneLLM Alpha 1 and PhoneBench

Pipecat released an open-weights (BSD) voice-agent LLM fine-tune of NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Nano, plus PhoneBench, a phone-agent eval for accuracy, style, latency, and cost.

Small open MoE for phone-agent tool calls, with a published cost/latency bench. Example self-host cost ~$0.0025/min at high concurrency on B200 via Modal.

Cartesia@cartesia 2 in corpus · first 2026-08-27

2026-08-27 · 2026-W35 · model · model · Sonic-3.6

Cartesia Sonic-3.6: streaming TTS, 44 languages, sub-90ms TTFA

Cartesia shipped Sonic-3.6, a streaming TTS model claiming #1 on both Artificial Analysis speech arenas across 44 languages with sub-90ms time-to-first-audio.

44-language streaming TTS with a sub-90ms TTFA claim. Treat the Artificial Analysis #1 as vendor-cited. Adds Odia, Urdu, and Hinglish code-switch.

Sonic-3.6 is now generally available. In January we made a bet: stop tuning the existing paradigm, rebuild from the architecture up.

https://x.com/cartesia/status/2093017207185821705

Google@Google 3 in corpus · first 2026-08-26

2026-08-26 · 2026-W35 · model · launch · Gemini Live

Gemini Live adds voice-driven Spark tasks, Daily Brief, and Gmail triage

Google expanded Gemini Live with voice-driven multi-step Spark tasks, a spoken Daily Brief, hands-free Gmail triage, and Personal Intelligence memory.

Voice can start multi-step Gemini jobs across Docs/Sheets/Drive (AI Pro+) and a spoken inbox (AI Plus+), on the same day as Gemini 3.5 Transcribe.

2026-08-26 · 2026-W35 · model · model · Gemini 3.5 Transcribe

Gemini 3.5 Transcribe replaces Chirp 3 for many developer workflows

Google launched Gemini 3.5 Transcribe for smart STT in live streaming and pre-recorded modes, replacing Chirp 3 for many developer workflows.

Google’s best ASR on the same Live API path as Gemini voice. Vendor: ~70% faster time-to-final versus Chirp 3. Artificial Analysis WER ~4.0% streaming / 2.6% non-streaming.

We're introducing Gemini 3.5 Transcribe, our most precise speech-to-text model yet

https://x.com/Google/status/2092659278632894576

NiCE Cognigy@cognigy 1 in corpus · first 2026-08-26

2026-08-26 · 2026-W35 · platform · launch · Agentic Building / Agent Plugin

NiCE Cognigy Agentic Building: coding agents ship CX voice agents over MCP

NiCE Cognigy launched Agentic Building via an open-source Agent Plugin so coding assistants (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Cursor) can create, test, and deploy Cognigy voice and chat agents from the IDE.

CCaaS is exposing the agent lifecycle to coding agents in the IDE, with the visual UI kept as the inspection surface.

ElevenLabs@ElevenLabs 4 in corpus · first 2026-08-06

2026-08-24 · 2026-W35 · platform · launch · ElevenLabs CLI v1

ElevenLabs CLI v1: pull/push agents as code

ElevenLabs released an agents-first CLI covering the full API plus agents-as-code pull/push workflows with --schema and --dry-run.

Agents as versioned files with dry-run and schema checks. Aimed at fleets, not a one-off agent in the web UI.

Today we are releasing ElevenLabs CLI v1, which brings the entire ElevenLabs API into the terminal.

https://x.com/ElevenLabs/status/2091916523132616961