Google admits Gemini AI demo was staged in Super Bowl ad

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.