Google’s Gemini struggles to grasp that the afternoon starts after noon

Gemini, Google's artificial intelligence-powered chatbot, has experienced a number of public blunders since it launched in December. In February, it faced right-wing backlash for being too "woke." Then in May, the chatbot made a factual error during a demonstration of its skills.

The company's other AI efforts have also had mixed results. In addition to Gemini, Google offers AI-generated summaries in response to search terms, which have claimed that humans should put glue on pizza and that dogs can play in the NFL.

Now, Google's Gemini is struggling to figure out when the morning ends and the afternoon begins: Redditors discovered that when they said "good morning" to the chatbot before noon, it told them "it's actually afternoon." When corrected on its mistake, Gemini apologized.

"I think Gemini needs more work," a redditor posted in the Google subreddit, r/Google, after Gemini told them it was afternoon at 6:50am.

Another user had a similar experience. When they said "good morning" to the chatbot at 11:18am, it told them that 11:18am is afternoon.

"Even though it's not morning, I hope you're having a great day so far," Gemini told the Redditor.

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When the user corrected Gemini and said that 11am is "technically before noon," Gemini acknowledged its mistake.

"You're absolutely right. I apologize for the mistake. 11:18 AM is indeed still morning," Gemini said. "While noon is technically the beginning of the afternoon, the first half of twelve can sometimes be referred to as 'late morning' depending on the context."

When the Daily Dot tested out Gemini's time-telling abilities in the morning, we got two different responses—one that was correct and one that wasn't.

When we wrote "good afternoon" to Gemini at 10:49am, it told us that "it's actually quite early in the day" and suggested we say "good morning" instead.

But then, when we wrote "good morning?" to Gemini at 10:50am, it told us—incorrectly—that the time was 11:50am, and that is "actually afternoon."

In fact, Gemini said that any time after 10:30am is afternoon.

But the chatbot does seem (sometimes) to know that afternoon begins after noon, though, as it told us in response to the question "is 11AM afternoon?"

"No, 11AM is not afternoon. In general, morning is typically understood to last until noon," Gemini said. "Afternoon usually starts at noon."

AI has the propensity to make mistakes when it is trained on incorrect or biased data and information. But it's unclear what type of information Gemini was trained on that would make it waffle on when afternoon begins.

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