Google’s upcoming Super Bowl advertisement has been found to misrepresent the capabilities of its Gemini AI by showing it generating a product description that existed years before the AI’s launch.
The central issue: A commercial intended for Super Bowl broadcast shows Google’s Gemini AI supposedly creating a product description for Wisconsin Cheese Mart, but investigation reveals the text has existed on the company’s website since 2020.
- The advertisement depicts Gemini generating website copy for a Gouda cheese listing
- The exact description shown in the ad has been publicly available since August 2020, three years before Gemini’s launch
- Google’s Gemini AI was not released until 2023, making it impossible for it to have created the content as portrayed
Previous controversy: The commercial had already faced criticism for accuracy issues before this revelation.
- The ad initially included an incorrect statistic claiming Gouda represents “50 to 60 percent of the world’s cheese consumption”
- Google subsequently edited the commercial to remove the inaccurate statistic
- The business owner also removed the incorrect information from their website
Google’s response: The company’s handling of the situation has raised questions about transparency in AI advertising.
- Google Cloud apps president Jerry Dischler defended the ad on social media platform X, claiming the Gouda statistic “was not a hallucination”
- Company spokesperson Michele Wyman stated the business owner requested Gemini rewrite the description without the statistic
- Google has not immediately responded to requests for comment about the pre-existing nature of the website description
Looking ahead: Marketing AI responsibly: This incident highlights the growing challenge of accurately representing AI capabilities in marketing materials, particularly in high-profile advertising venues like the Super Bowl where companies face pressure to demonstrate technological leadership.
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