28-05-2025
- Business
- Android Authority
Don't Google "Is it 2025?" unless you want to laugh at the state of AI
Google
TL;DR Google Search's AI Overview results are known to confidently give wrong answers, and they continue to do so.
The latest gaffe surfaced when users asked if it is 2025, to which AI Overview incorrectly claims it is 2024 and not 2025.
Such confidently wrong results highlight the perils of relying on AI for fact-checking. Users can turn off AI Overview for cleaner search results.
If you bumped your head a few years ago and just woke up, brace yourself: the world is basically run by AI now, for better or worse. You're probably dizzy, half from the concussion, and the other half from all the AI chatbots around you. Once you recover from the shock and Google if it's finally 2025, AI still can't tell you if it indeed is 2025.
Reddit user Independent-Wait-873 asked Google Search if it was 2025, to which Google Search's AI Overview very confidently replied that it wasn't 2025 but 2024. Curiously, AI Overview got the date and month right for the user, but it couldn't get the year right.
We tried it for ourselves, and sure enough, AI Overview confidently gives the wrong answer for the search query 'Is it 2025?'
In the original response, the disclaimer 'AI responses may include mistakes' is hidden until you click Show More, which users won't since the rest of the search result is blank — there's nothing there to expect more content. One would also reasonably expect AI responses not to be displayed if they may include mistakes. Thankfully, if you ask Google 'What year is it?' the question doesn't trigger an AI Overview and shows just '2025' in a snippet, with no mistakes.
One can argue that asking the right question is a skill if you want to find the right answer through Google. But in the age of AI and AI Overview, even the most basic questions get confident wrong answers, and to anyone innocently asking these questions, it may not be apparent that the answer is incorrect. For instance, people have Googled gibberish idioms, and AI Overview gave them confident but wrong answers. If you are frustrated by the lack of credible information in such search results, you can consider turning off AI Overviews for a cleaner, more conventional Google Search experience.
Google has said in the past that AI Overviews don't appear for every query. Instead, they are designed to surface when Google's systems are most confident that an AI Overview will be high-quality and helpful. When AI Overviews are triggered on queries where they might not be as helpful, Google uses those examples to improve the triggers. Given that Google Search continues to process billions of search queries every day, the company says there are bound to be some oddities, as there are with all Search features.
We've contacted Google for a statement on this latest AI Overview faux pas. We'll update this article when we learn more.
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