Google's Gemini Super Bowl ad faces criticism for cheesy claim

Summary

Google’s Gemini AI made an inaccurate claim about Gouda cheese in a Super Bowl commercial.
X user Nate Hake pointed out the error, which claims that Gouda cheese accounts for “50 to 60 percent of the world’s cheese consumption” when it does not.
The incident highlights that AI, even as popular and big as Gemini, can still make mistakes.

The Super Bowl is this Sunday, and with the rapid rise of AI worldwide, there are bound to be lots of commercials centered around it. However, a common issue with AI is that it sometimes gets things wrong, and Google seems to be learning that the hard way.

In its Super Bowl commercial about a Wisconsin cheese business utilizing AI in the workplace, Gemini erroneously answered a prompt about Gouda cheese, claiming that it accounts for “50 to 60 percent of the world’s cheese consumption,” which is not correct. The error was first spotted by X user Nate Hake. You can check out a screenshot from the ad below, which Google has since edited out.

Google

In a statement to The Verge, a professor at Cornell University told them that while Gouda cheese is a “common single variety in world trade”, it is “almost assuredly not the most widely consumed.” The claim seems to have originated from a website called Cheese.com, which users on Reddit 11 years ago were quick to dispute also, with one saying “I don’t think this is anywhere near true.”

Google Gemini

Gemini is Google’s premier AI assistant app for the Android operating system that can provide text responses to questions, generate and analyze images, and is now available on iOS.

See what Google is ‘thinking’ with new Gemini update

Google is rolling out a number of updates for Gemini 2.0 and making its new ‘reasoning’ model available for free to users in the Gemini app.

Google removed the claim from the ad

The tech giant was called out on X for Gemini’s Gouda cheese slip up

After facing backlash online, Google has removed the claim about Gouda cheese from its Wisconsin Gemini Super Bowl commercial. X user Nate Hake was the first to point out the error, and called out Google for its “AI hallucination” about Gouda cheese in its Gemini ad. This post prompted a response on X from Jerry Dischler, president of cloud applications at Google, who challenged Hake’s assertion.

“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 percent stat,” Dischler said on X. Shortly afterward, Google edited the claim about Gouda cheese out of the Gemini commercial, prompting Hawke to clap back at the tech giant.

Who knew that a commercial about cheese could cause such an uproar? But thanks to Gemini, it did. This shows that even though tech giants are marketing AI as the productivity tool of the future, it can still make mistakes. AI can be extremely useful for researching ideas and finding information; however, as Google has learned here, it’s always best to double-check them.