Google’s Gemini AI Keeps Confusing My Dog for a Cat
▼ Summary
– Google Home’s Gemini feature provides more descriptive security camera alerts, such as identifying delivery drivers instead of just “Person seen.”
– The author finds Gemini’s package detection most useful, allowing them to ask how many packages arrived and identify carriers like FedEx.
– Despite its improvements, Gemini consistently misidentifies the author’s dog as a cat, even in daily Home Brief summaries.
– Google updated its smart-home voice assistant by replacing Google Assistant with Gemini, enabling better command understanding and home automation.
– While smarter alerts are generally more accurate, Gemini sometimes hallucinates events, such as reporting people walking up stairs when they were on the sidewalk.
My Google Home app recently informed me that a cat had leaped onto my sofa. This was puzzling, given that I don’t actually own a cat. The alert arrived while I was attending a party, and upon investigation, the “feline” in question turned out to be my dog. This peculiar notification surfaced just a day after I activated Google’s Gemini for Home capability, a feature that integrates advanced large language models into the smart home ecosystem. One of its most practical applications is generating more descriptive alerts from my Nest security cameras. Instead of a generic “Person seen” message, it can now specify that “FedEx came by and dropped off two packages.”
Over the past two weeks, I’ve found Gemini’s ability to identify delivery drivers particularly valuable. At day’s end, I can simply ask the Google Home app, “How many packages came today?” and receive a precise answer. It’s reassuring to know it’s FedEx at the door, as detected by my Nest Doorbell, and not someone trying to sell me new windows. Despite these intelligent features, Gemini stubbornly insists that a cat resides in my home.
Google isn’t the sole player enhancing its smart-home system with artificial intelligence. Amazon recently unveiled a feature for its Ring cameras called Search Party. This tool leverages a network of outdoor Ring cameras throughout a neighborhood to assist in locating a lost pet. The potential for such technology to be misused is not difficult to imagine.
In early October, Google upgraded the voice assistant on its smart-home devices by replacing Google Assistant with Gemini. For the most part, this new assistant is a significant improvement. It can comprehend multiple commands spoken in a single sentence, and you can easily instruct it to automate household tasks without navigating the complex Routines section in the app. When I pose a simple question, it typically provides a reliable answer directly, rather than redirecting me to a Google Search results page.
These smarter camera alerts are genuinely more useful at a quick glance. I used to routinely dismiss “Person Seen” notifications because they often just indicated people passing by my property. Now, the alerts specify “Person walks by,” giving me the confidence to ignore them. Some alerts are remarkably accurate, such as “Two people opened the gate,” though occasionally it misinterprets scenes, reporting “Person walks up stairs” when someone was merely strolling on the sidewalk. It has been fairly consistent in correctly identifying UPS, FedEx, and USPS drivers at my door, which is incredibly helpful when I’m busy or away from home, ensuring I remember to check for deliveries later.
However, with my indoor security cameras, Gemini consistently reports a cat wandering through my house. It’s my dog. Even in my daily Home Brief, a summary from Gemini detailing home activity, it states things like, “In the early morning, a white cat was active, walking into the living room and sitting on the couch.” I find this especially amusing since my dog has a strong aversion to felines.
You might assume that I could simply inform this more intelligent assistant, “I don’t have a cat; I have a dog,” and it would learn from this correction. I attempted exactly that. The Ask Home feature allows you to converse with Gemini about anything related to your home. This is where you can request it to create automations. For instance, I asked it to turn on the living room lights when the cameras detect my wife or me arriving home, and it understood the command perfectly. It even deduced that I wanted the lights to activate only during evening arrivals, despite my forgetting to specify that detail.
(Source: Wired)
