Google’s AI gets cheese fact wrong in Super Bowl commercial (Updated)

Our tech overlords tell us that artificial intelligence is so powerful that it will soon dominate our daily lives by providing us with all the information we could possibly need at a moment’s notice.

As for whether or not that information is actually correct, well, we’ll let marketing worry about that.

Google recently debuted its Super Bowl ads that showcase how their Gemini AI can be used across the 50 states. At first glance, they seem fine, but Wisconsin viewers might have cause for concern when it comes to the cheese facts provided in the commercial.

In the Wisconsin ad, which features a dairy farmer, the AI text says Gouda accounts for “50 to 60 percent of the world’s cheese consumption.” As initially noted by travel blogger Nate Hake, that is factually incorrect.

In Google’s Wisconsin local Super Bowl ad, an AI hallucination is shown on screen:

It says *Gouda* accounts for “50 to 60 percent of the world’s cheese consumption.”

Gemini provides no source, but that is just unequivocally false

Cheddar & mozzarella would like a word… pic.twitter.com/UwIBHAO4x6

— Nate Hake (@natejhake) January 31, 2025

“While Gouda is likely the most common single variety in world trade, it is almost assuredly not the most widely consumed,” Andrew Novakovic, E.V. Baker Professor of Agricultural Economics Emeritus at Cornell University, told The Verge.

While the commercial doesn’t include sourcing for the incorrect stat, it does appear to have originated from a site called Cheese.com. However, the legitimacy of that statistic has been debated for at least a decade.

For their part, Google is standing by the veracity of the claim. The company pointed The Verge to an X reply from Google Cloud apps president Jerry Dischler.

“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,” Dischler wrote.

As The Verge noted, the fine print beneath Gemini’s response in the commercial reads, “This is a creative writing aid, and is not intended to be factual.”

That might clear Google of any malfeasance but it also seems to undercut the entire point of generative AI, no? If your tool is providing information that still needs to be independently fact-checked and verified, what’s the point of the tool? Sounds like you just created an unnecessary middleman.

Anyway, our entire economy now depends on this stuff working, so, good luck everyone!

UPDATE: The Verge reports that Google has removed the incorrect information from the final commercial that will air during the Super Bowl. In the edited YouTube video, Gemini’s response now skips over the specifics and says Gouda is “one of the most popular cheeses in the world.”