Google Home acting

Spooky season is about to reach its apex with Halloween on Friday (Oct. 31), and Google Home may be getting in on the action. Reportedly, Google’s smart home devices have started inventing fake people and events.

A couple of Reddit users claim that their devices started acting up this week. The initial post on the r/googlehome subreddit concerned the poster’s Nest camera, giving an active summary that said “Michael was seen taking out trash,” even though they say that no one by that name lives there.

The user, jpro1001, asked about it and Google’s assistant reportedly said that the camera “can identify faces even if you haven’t explicitly named them.” It was supposed to add that it spotted the mysterious “Michael” between October 26 and 27.

The user went on to say they’d never put Michael into their system and that Google Home was describing actions he had done. “That was pretty creepy who the heck is Michael!?”

Several commenters joked that horror slashers like Michael Myers and Jason Vorhees were stalking the user’s house.

Another commenter had a similar story about Google Home lying about trash day. They said it prompted them about trash day. They told the assistant it wasn’t trash day and it apparently denied it.

“When I said that it told me that just a minute ago, it doubled down on the denial and said that I must be mistaken,” Wordyplayer said. “Because there is no record of it, and it never said that to me.”

A third person reported that their device claimed that their friend David had come over and vacuumed the living room. Which, again, was not true.

A sudden trend?

Last week, a different Redditor posted about Google Home providing a summary of their day but identifying them as a woman named Sarah. The problem, as they wrote is “I am a man, live alone, and don’t even have a friend named Sarah.”

Apparently, Google Home got sassy when asked about it. “You told me that Sarah is actually {my name} today, but that I invented the name Sarah yesterday. How can both of these things be true?” their device was supposed to have responded.

He added that the assistant also claimed there were two dogs in the house, when he owns only one. A couple of other people responded in that thread with similar experiences.

It’s not clear if this is a widespread trend. Though multiple reports in the last week is concerning. There is a common thread though.

Gemini to blame?

Starting on October 1, Google Assistant began phasing out in favor of Google’s AI chatbot, Gemini. The AI assistant is supposed to enable more natural language prompting thanks to Gemini Live.

Outside of language, Google Gemini is supposed to provide better automation for Home devices. Gemini brings a lot to the table as it replaces Google Assistant.

Google tends to rollout updates like this meaning that not everyone had access on October 1. Instead, Gemini would slowly appear over the coming weeks.

It’s possible that more people are starting to see Gemini on their Home devices as we get closer to the end of the month. User jpro1001 confirmed in a response that they were using Gemini in their device. The user from last week also said they were suing Gemini.

AI bots are known to hallucinate. Google’s own AI was caught making up idioms earlier this year, and a recent study found that OpenAI’s chatbot is wrong one in four times.

Silence from Google

Tom’s Guide has reached out to Google for comment on possible Gemini hallucinations. Otherwise, we haven’t seen any official response from Google about this issue.

Though, it’s possible that Google is aware of it. Under the post from last week a GoogleNest moderator responded saying that the “team would like to look into this.” They asked the poster to send a clip of the “Sarah” incident in. The user said responded saying they sent information in.

If Google responds, we’ll update this story.

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