Google is updating AI Overviews, but it still doesn't know what year it is

Summary

Google launches Gemini 2.0 to improve AI Overviews’ responses, especially for challenging math and coding questions.
AI Overview still needs some work though, as it incorrectly states the current year as 2024 instead of 2025 when asked “is it 2025.”
Google unveils AI Mode in Labs for Google One AI Premium subscribers, offering advanced search capabilities right in Google search.

Google’s AI Overview feature doesn’t have the best reputation, and it seems the company is desperately trying to improve it.

In a recent blog post, Google announced it is launching Gemini 2.0 for AI Overviews in the US to help answer “harder questions,” like those involving math or coding. Google claims that with Gemini 2.0, AI Overviews will “provide faster and higher quality responses.”

If you’re unfamiliar with AI Overviews, it’s a feature on Google search that summarizes search results using AI and spits out its answer at the top of the search page. However, AI Overview can get things wrong, including what year it is (via Digital Trends).

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AI Overview can’t figure out what year it is

Is it 2025? Google’s AI Overview thinks not

Google search asking "is it 2025?" but AI Overview says it isn't. — Google / Pocket-lint

Google / Pocket-lint

“Is it 2025?” might be one of the easiest questions on planet earth to answer correctly, but it appears that it might be too much for Google’s AI Overview. If you Google the question, the AI Overview’s answer at the top of the page is: “No, it is not currently the year 2025. The current year is 2024. 2025 is the year that will come after 2024.”

I Googled this myself, as did other Pocket-lint staff members and a few of my friends, and we all got the same result, so it doesn’t seem like an isolated occurrence. If this isn’t proof that AI Overview still needs a lot of work, I don’t know what is. Hopefully, with the rollout of Gemini 2.0, AI Overviews will see a vast improvement, but that has yet to be seen. Google claims that over a billion people have used AI Overviews, and the feature is arguably helpful in some cases, but it’s always best to double-check its work.

Google

Google also recently revealed a new AI Mode, a new search mode exclusively available in Google Labs for Google One AI Premium subscribers for the time being. AI Mode lets you ask even more challenging questions in Google search and uses advanced reasoning, thinking, and multimodal capabilities to provide detailed answers, with the option to ask follow-up questions. To me, it seems like Google is integrating its Gemini chatbot right into Google search now with AI Mode. This feature is experimental, and it’s unclear when it will get a wider release.

While Gemini’s abilities are seemingly leagues ahead of Apple Intelligence and somewhat on-par with ChatGPT, Google still has a lot of work cut out for it ahead. Hopefully, AI Overview will know its 2025 soon.