Google AI Overviews Fails to Identify Tuesday
▼ Summary
– Google’s AI Overviews incorrectly state that May 29, 2025, is Wednesday, despite the correct date being Thursday.
– The AI provides conflicting answers about the current year, stating it is both 2025 and 2024 in different responses.
– Basic queries like “Is it Tuesday?” or “Is it Thursday?” yield no AI Overview results, while “Is it Friday?” is answered correctly.
– Industry experts criticize Google’s rushed AI deployment, citing energy waste and flawed outputs on simple queries.
– AI Overviews’ frequent errors undermine trust in Google’s AI capabilities and threaten the web’s current business model.
Google’s AI Overview feature struggles with basic calendar questions, delivering inconsistent and often incorrect information about dates and days of the week. While the technology giant has positioned its AI tools as revolutionary, recent tests reveal surprising gaps in functionality for simple queries.
When asked “Is it Tuesday?”, Google’s response claimed Wednesday was the current day—despite correctly identifying the date as May 29, 2025. The same confusion appeared when users inquired about other days, with the system failing to recognize Thursday while accurately confirming Friday.
Even more puzzling, the AI provided conflicting answers about the current year. In some responses, it correctly stated 2025, while in others, it insisted the year was 2024—citing a calendar as its source. These inconsistencies raise questions about the reliability of AI-generated summaries for straightforward factual queries.
Industry experts have expressed frustration with the feature’s shortcomings. Andrew Cock-Starkey, an SEO consultant, criticized the rush to deploy AI, noting the significant environmental costs associated with running massive data centers for flawed outputs. Nikki Lam, head of SEO at NP Digital, highlighted the irony of Google promoting its “most powerful AI” while struggling with basic calendar logic.
The broader implications are concerning. If AI Overviews can’t reliably answer simple questions about dates, how trustworthy are they for more complex topics? These errors contribute to growing skepticism about AI’s role in search, particularly as businesses grapple with the impact of automated responses on web traffic and revenue.
For now, users may want to double-check Google’s AI answers—especially if they need to know what day it is.
(Source: Search Engine Land)
