It can feel like a hassle when you’re in a new place, especially a new country, and you don’t speak the language. You pull out your phone, hoping Google Translate can help. You speak, then pause and wait for the app to translate. The other person responds, and then you wait again. It often feels clunky and awkward.
On Tuesday, Google released Gemini 3.5 Live Translate. It listens continuously while someone is speaking, translates in real time, and speaks back in the other person’s language, with only a couple of seconds' delay — almost like an old long-distance phone call.
“Twenty years ago, translation at Google began as one of our pioneering machine learning experiments to turn the science of language into the magic of human connection,” the company said.
Previously, the live translate feature was exclusive to Pixel devices. This updated version will now work on any device, whether Android or iOS.
It supports 70 languages automatically, so there’s no need to set them manually. You just speak, and it detects the language. Imagine trying to order in a café in Paris where only French is spoken, and you’re an English speaker; just turn on Live Translate and Gemini 3.5 will pick up the language and translate in real time. At least that’s how it is supposed to work in theory.
Oluwajeminipe Fasheun-Motesho
Google is also trying to do something different. Most live translation apps, including earlier Google versions, tend to sound monotonous or robotic. To fix this, Google says Gemini 3.5 Live Translate will generate “smooth, natural-sounding translated speech that preserves the speakers’ intonation, pacing, and pitch.”
The new tool will work in noisy environments, handle overlapping voices, and support use cases like customer support calls, classrooms, guided tours, ride-sharing, and live broadcasts.
But the technology also raises concerns, particularly around the spread of deepfakes. Google appears to have accounted for this, as every translation is watermarked with SynthID, helping users identify AI-generated audio.
While Google is improving translation AI, it is also lowering the cost of its paid AI offerings. Google AI Plus has dropped from $7.99 to $4.99 per month, while storage has doubled from 200GB to 400GB.
With the cheaper plan, users will also get video generation via Omni Flash, the creative studio Google Flow, and NotebookLM, Google’s AI research assistant.
“If you look at the web era, the infrastructure companies were Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, Northern Telecom, Lucent, Akamai, Equinix,” said Chi-Hua Chien of Goodwater Capital when discussing Google’s pricing strategy with TechCrunch. “A lot of those companies survived for a period of time but aren’t worth a lot today. The end customer doesn’t think, ‘Ooh, are my bits moving on Cisco networking equipment?’ They’re just thinking, ‘How do I move my bits as cheaply as possible?’”
This isn’t the first time an AI company has tried a lower-cost subscription model. In India last year, OpenAI launched ChatGPT Go for about $4.60 per month. Google followed with a sub-$5 plan in December, and now that pricing logic has expanded to the US.
For now, Anthropic is the only major AI company that hasn’t joined the trend of cheaper subscription tiers. But with competitors cutting prices, it may only be a matter of time before it follows suit.
Emmanuel Umahi
