I vibe coded a playground UI for trying this out. The conversation mode is neat, and it's very expensive - most of my experiments have cost less than a cent.

https://tools.simonwillison.net/gemini-tts-playground#compos...

▲

simonw 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Example (topical, pelican themed) audio clip here: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/23/gemini-tts-playground/

▲

mohsen1 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Why tho? AI Studio has this model available and I don't need to paste the API key anywhere

https://aistudio.google.com/generate-speech?model=gemini-3.8...

	▲	simonw 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Because building my own is a better way to understand the capabilities of the model and how to use it - and to verify that it can be used via CORS.

▲

iAMkenough 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Very expensive?

	▲	simonloserson 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		he's vibe writing

▲

eis 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Nice but in general I wouldn't put my API key into some third party website, no matter if it claims to not store it. It's not something personal, you are a bit of a celeb here so I wouldn't think you'd save the keys, it's just good general data hygiene. Especially not if a leaked API key can rack up thousands of dollars in fees quickly.

	▲	simonw 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Sure. Feel free to copy the code and run it yourself instead.