The Lumina Sales blog
Updates, ideas, and practical notes from Lumina Sales on building and selling AI software.
Follow via RSSNot necessarily. Regal's October 2026 benchmark shows newer models losing on live calls because they dropped fast settings. Here is what that means for the model behind a client's phone line, and why Block's Dessa is still only a demo.
OpenAI's Decisions API went generally available on October 22, and GPT-Live can now call it while a caller is mid-sentence. Here is what shipped this month, what it costs, and the four places it does not help you.
xAI shipped Grok Voice 3.0 at $0.08 a minute. Here is what was announced, what it does to voice line math, and how an agency should test it before touching a live client.
GPT-6 Luna runs a client chat conversation for about half a cent. Here is the math, what the model can't do (audio, for one), and why you shouldn't cut your monthly because of it.
ElevenLabs launched a self-serve AI receptionist from $29 a month. Here is what it includes, where a custom buildout still wins, and what to change on your next demo call.
AI agents can complete a purchase inside a chat window. They cannot book your client's 2pm. Here is what the shipped commerce protocols actually cover, why hotels are the first service vertical, and what to sell into the trades while the rest of it is still a waitlist.
In the first four months of 2026, 68% of US Google searches ended without a click. For local service businesses that does not mean the phone stops ringing, it means fewer and later contacts. Here is what the data actually supports, where the argument gets oversold, and what to sell instead of traffic.
Google started testing Gemini calls to businesses on September 24, and Meta expanded outbound Muse calls a week earlier. A share of the calls hitting your clients' front desks are now placed by software. Here is what that changes in the systems you sell, and where the trend is smaller than it sounds.
A voice AI agent costs roughly $0.08 to $0.18 a minute in raw usage on the major platforms, and speech-to-speech models cost several times more. We did the math for a typical local service client and found the minutes are the cheap part.
No US federal rule makes a business announce that its inbound phone agent is an AI. But three other regimes reach your clients, one started applying on August 2, and the state rule most likely to bite rewards disclosing anyway. What an AI agency actually needs to know.
The Census Bureau puts US business AI use at 19.8%, with firms of four or fewer employees under 20% and flat for six months. Meanwhile voice model pricing fell and quality rose. That gap is a distribution problem, and it is the whole reason an AI agency has a market.
OpenAI put GPT-Live-1 into the API on September 10, 2026. It listens and speaks at the same time, and the voice layer costs $0.05 a minute. Here is what that changes for an agency selling AI phone systems to local businesses, and the four things it does not fix.
