The AI Super Bowl, with multiple tech giants clamoring to advertise advanced chatbots, already had its first big fumble, after a Google ad provided wildly inaccurate facts. Google plans to air 50 local ads in 50 states, each showing a different small business that relied on its Gemini AI to handle important tasks, such as writing website copy, crunching data and organizing email—but at least one of those commercials had multiple mistakes.
The Google gaffes in question: An ad for Wisconsin Cheese Mart opened with a worker at the shop saying in a voiceover, “There’s more cows in Wisconsin than there are people.” There aren’t.
Later in the ad, Gemini is seen crafting website copy, being asked to write Gouda cheese facts. Gemini writes: “It is one of the most popular cheeses in the world, accounting for 50 to 60 percent of the world’s cheese consumption.” Gouda does not account for that much of the cheese market.
The Verge was the first to report on the error in the Gouda cheese writeup, and subsequently reported that Gemini didn’t even seem to write the description as depicted in the commercial. The Gouda factoid had been on the cheese shop’s site since 2022, and Gemini launched in 2023. If the commercial shows Gemini writing copy it didn’t originate, that could be a whole other issue. Ad Age detected the false claim about there being more cows than people in Wisconsin, which was shared in the voiceover at the start of the initial ad. It was later modified; the updated version of the commercial now opens with, “There’s a lot of cows in Wisconsin.”
Below are the original and updated versions of the ad.