It's pretty common knowledge that AI is full of mistakes and hallucinations, but that hasn't stopped tech companies like Google from advertising it as a business solution for the ages.
But when Google spent $8 million on a Super Bowl ad to promote 50 stories featuring their Gemini AI, it resulted in a bit of a cheesy embarrassment.
The ad featured the following text that a cheese store generated for their website using Gemini:
Gouda is a Dutch cheese named after the city of Gouda in the Netherlands. It is one of the most popular cheeses in the world, accounting for 50 to 60 percent of the world's cheese consumption. Smoked Gouda is a variant of this famous cheese, smoked in brick ovens over flaming hickory chip embers. This sweet curd is similar to Edam except that it contains more milk fat, which gives it a creamier texture and causes it to become more buttery with age. Sensational with beer, this cows milk cheese has an edible, smoky brown rind and a creamy, yellow interior.
Viewers were quick to point out that the gouda sales were inaccurate. Both Cheddar and Mozzarella outsell Gouda, which makes the cheese holding 50-60 percent of the market a mathematical impossibility.
Which begs the question: Was it just another case of AI fabricating answers?
Google maintained it was not. Google president Jerry Dischler posted the following in defense of the ad:
Not 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! Bada news: not everyone thinks it's as grate.
And it's true.
Those stats CAN be found on the internet.
For example, this cheese website has those exact stats. In fact it has those stats and all the other words Gemini produced — verbatim.
That website also has a bigger problem that Google and all the other AI companies are bumping up against:
Check out this little bit of text at the bottom of the website's page:
© 2020, Wisconsin Cheese Mart
That exact text was produced and copyrighted in 2020, and Gemini ripped it verbatim right on video; a video Google spent $8 million to show to the entire world.
AI's propensity to pull entire lines of copyrighted text from the internet, but also digital books and magazines that are supposed to be behind paywalls, has resulted in hundreds of copyright class-action lawsuits against AI companies.
These companies literally copied the entire internet, the entirety of which was created by other people, and it's all timestamped and so could theoretically be argued to be copyrighted by all those people.
It's no wonder Google reacted so quickly when their blunder came to light. They edited the video and switched out the questionable text.
And as one of the perks of owning Youtube, somehow the video's posted date didn't change at all when Google changed it.
Clearly, the text has been switched out for a whole new description of Gouda cheese:
Gouda, a Dutch cheese, is one of the most popular cheeses in the world. Smoked Gouda is a variant of this cheese, smoked in brick ovens over flaming hickory chip embers. This sweet curd is similar to Edam except that it contains more milk fat, which gives it a creamier texture and causes it to become more buttery with age. Sensational with beer, this cows milk cheese has an edible, smoky brown rind and a creamy, yellow interior.
Talk about gaslighting!
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