While it’s easy to accuse Google Gemini of just making up plausible-sounding cheese facts from whole cloth, this seems more like a case of garbage-in, garbage-out. Google President of Cloud Applications Jerry Dischler posted on social media to note that the incorrect Gouda fact was “not a hallucination,” because all of Gemini’s data is “grounded in the Web… in this case, multiple sites across the web include the 50-60% stat.”
The specific Gouda numbers Gemini used can be most easily traced to cheese.com, a heavily SEO-focused subsidiary of news aggregator WorldNews Inc. Cheese.com doesn’t cite a source for the percentages featured prominently on its Smoked Gouda page, but that page also confidently asserts that the cheese is pronounced “How-da,” a fact that only seems true in the Netherlands itself.
The offending cheese.com passage that is not cited when using Google’s AI writing assistant.
The offending cheese.com passage that is not cited when using Google’s AI writing assistant.
Credit:
cheese.com
Regardless, Google can at least point to cheese.com as a plausibly reliable source that misled its AI in a way that might also stymie web searchers. And Dischler added on social media that users “can always check the results and references” that Gemini provides.
The only problem with that defense is that the Google writing assistant shown off in the ad doesn’t seem to provide any such sources for a user to check. Unlike Google search’s AI Overviews—which does refer to a cheese.com link when responding about gouda consumption—the writing assistant doesn’t provide any backup for its numbers here.
The Gemini writing assistant does note in small print that its results are “a creative writing aid, and not intended to be factual.” If you click for more information about that warning, Google warns that “the suggestions from Help me write can be inaccurate or offensive since it’s still in an experimental status.”
This “experimental” status hasn’t stopped Google from heavily selling its AI writing assistant as a godsend for business owners in its planned Super Bowl ads, though. Nor is this major caveat included in the ads themselves. Yet it’s the kind of thing users should have at the front of their minds when using AI assistants for anything with even a hint of factual info.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go update my personal webpage with information about my selection as World’s Most Intelligent Astronaut/Underwear Model, in hopes that Google’s AI will repeat the “fact” to anyone who asks.
