Google’s Gemini video search makes factual error in demo

Google made a lot of noise about its Gemini AI taking over search at its I/O conference today, but one of its flashiest demos was once again marked by the ever-present fatal flaw of every large language model to date: confidently making up the wrong answer.

During a sizzle reel for “Search in the Gemini era,” Google demoed video search, which allows you to search by speaking over a video clip. The example is a video of a stuck film advance lever on a film camera with the query “why is the lever not moving all the way,” which Gemini recognizes and provides some suggestions to fix. Very impressive!

The only problem is that the answers it comes up with are, on the whole, hilariously bad, and Google literally highlighted the suggestion to “open the back door and gently remove the film,” which is perhaps the worst thing you can do in this situation. (If you’re not familiar with how film cameras work, opening the door in this way in anything but a totally dark room would expose your film to light, ruining any photos you’ve taken.)

This is the second time Google has produced a slick asset showing one of its own AI products getting an answer wrong — last year, the Bard chatbot confidently lied about the James Webb Space Telescope being the first to photograph a planet outside our Solar System. Whoops!

Leave a Comment