Why Google AI Overview Keeps Failing Simple Spelling Tests | WION Podcast

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]Welcome to the WON podcast. In this episode, we uncover the bizarre flaw inside Google's AI overview, where one of the world's most advanced AI systems is suddenly struggling with something even school children can do. Counting letters in simple words correctly. A strange new problem with Google's search-based AI feature has triggered online mockery and renewed questions about the limits of large language models. Ask it how many L's are there in Google and it says two. Even when you ask it about its own AI tool Gemini, it gets it wrong. When I asked the new search tool on Google, how many M's are there in Gemini? It responded two. Even when I ask how many times an alphabet appears in a word that doesn't even use the letter, it gives me a number. How many P's are there in Google? I asked.

[00:00:58]It replied with, "There is only one P in the word Google."

[00:01:04]People are sharing similar screenshots of the new search misspelling words.

[00:01:08]With AI already becoming a topic of resentment across industries, when Google releases a product that fails to get right what a primary school child can tell, it is itself providing foder for mockery. Other spelling mistakes it made include the word journalism, which it spelled as J O U R N A D I S M. It also goes on to claim the word contains two D's. It also gets the spelling of American President Donald Trump wrong, writing T R P U M. In one instance where it said there were two L's in Google, it was actually relying on an article from 2009 about Google's 11th birthday doodle, Google 11. Google has acknowledged the problem which has been flagged by users in the past as well.

[00:01:57]The company says counting letters within words remains a known challenge for large language models or LLMs. When you ask Gemini the reason for AI tools misspelling words, it says, "Rather than reading text like a human, these models dissect language into tokens, chunks of characters that can represent prefixes, syllables, or full words." It adds, "Because the model perceives apple as a single ID rather than the sequence a ppl ple e, it lacks an inherent I for individual characters.

[00:02:35]It acknowledged in the end, "An AI can write a brilliant essay on Shakespeare, but may still stumble if you ask it to count the number of N's in the word banana."

[00:02:46]Users flagged another problem with Google AI overview after it was launched, where it was treating certain words as a command and not actually answering the query about it. Typically, when you write disregard in a Google search, it would define the word and give contextual meaning. However, this time it replied, understood. Let me know whenever you have a new prompt or question. Similar things happened with words like ignore and forget. Thanks for tuning into this incredible story. If this episode resonated with you, don't forget to hit the like and subscribe button for more captivating stories to come. Stay tuned.