Google has edited an advert for its leading artificial intelligence (AI) tool, Gemini, before its broadcast during the Super Bowl after it was found to contain false information about gouda cheese.
The local commercial, which advertises how people can use “AI for every business”, showcases Gemini’s abilities by depicting the tool helping a cheesemonger in Wisconsin to write a product description, including the erroneous line that gouda accounts for “50% to 60% of global cheese consumption”.
However, a blogger posted on X that the stat was an “AI hallucination” that is “unequivocally false”, as more reliable data suggests the Dutch cheese is probably less popular than cheddar or mozzarella.
The blogger Nate Hake added: “I found the above AI slop example in 20 minutes, and on the first Super Bowl ad I tried factchecking.”
Replying to him, the Google executive Jerry Dischler said this was not a “hallucination” – where AI systems invent untrue information – but rather a reflection of the fact the untrue information is contained in the websites that Gemini scrapes.
He wrote: “Gemini is grounded in the web – and users can always check the results and references. In this case, multiple sites across the web include the 50-60% stat.”
In a statement, Google said it remade the ad to remove the error after speaking to the cheesemonger featured in the clip and asking him what he would have done.
“Following his suggestion to have Gemini rewrite the product description without the stat, we updated the user interface to reflect what the business would do,” the statement added.
Google’s AI tools have previously come under fire for containing errors or unhelpful advice. In May last year, its AI overviews search feature was criticised after it told some users to use “non-toxic glue” when they searched for “how to make cheese stick to pizza better”, while AI-generated responses said geologists recommended humans eat one rock a day.
Last year, Gemini was “paused” after Google conceded it “definitely messed up” after a slew of social media posts exposed how Gemini’s image generation tool depicting a variety of historical figures – including popes, founding fathers of the US and, most excruciatingly, German second world war soldiers – as people of colour.
The images, along with Gemini chatbot responses that vacillated over whether libertarians or Stalin had caused the greater harm, prompted negative commentary from figures including Elon Musk.
