Google Tackles Media Blunders in Gemini Super Bowl Ad’s Whopper of an Error

Google’s Super Bowl Ad Flub: Can AI Really Cut It?

Google’s high-profile Super Bowl ad featuring its AI assistant, Gemini, fell flat when a cheesy statistical error made its way onto the airwaves. In the ad, a Wisconsin cheesemonger uses Gemini to generate a product description for Gouda cheese, claiming that it accounts for "50 to 60 percent of global cheese consumption." Yikes, folks! That’s a full-blown dairy debacle.

Gemini’s Gone Rogue

This isn’t the first time Gemini has gotten a fact wrong. The AI model, which is designed to be a helpful sidekick for search queries, has a history of errors. Back in its Bard days, Gemini got astronomy facts wrong in real-time, and later, it declared that geologists recommend eating one rock per day. And now, with the Gouda gaffe, it seems like Gemini still has some fine-tuning to do.

The Blame Game

After the backlash, Google re-edited the ad, quietly removing the Gouda claim and replacing it with a new description. But even that wasn’t without controversy, as some people pointed out that the new video still maintained the original upload timestamp, suggesting Google used its ownership of YouTube to cover up the mistake.

The Trust Conundrum

For Google to succeed with its AI ambitions, people need to trust Gemini’s output. The problem is that AI doesn’t have a built-in common sense filter, and sometimes that means serving up nonsense. Unlike human writers, AI doesn’t take a step back and think, "Wait, that sounds ridiculous." It just spits out whatever it finds, and that can lead to some pretty bizarre claims.

The Verdict

For the average person, this ad fail serves as a reminder that AI still struggles with accuracy and shouldn’t be the only arbiter of what gets treated as fact. And while Gouda may be delicious, it’s not the dominant force in global cheese consumption, as Monty Python so delightfully pointed out.

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Twitter users were quick to call out the error:

"Hey @Google, this is a hallucination, 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. Gouda news: many love this cheese! Bad news: not everyone thinks it’s as great." – Google VP Jerry Dischler

"Hold on – the YT video still says it was uploaded ‘5 days ago’… YouTube doesn’t allow creators to replace an existing video with new content like this. Is Google abusing its ownership of YouTube to execute a cover-up?"