Googles AI Overview still cant spell, and the internet is very aware of it

Source: Mashable Tech

Google AI Overviews often hallucinate, fabricating facts such as “glue on pizza” and getting basic questions wrong. Despite improvements in accuracy over the past two years, the Gemini‑powered technology still struggles with spelling tests.

The AI’s spelling weakness went viral two years ago when it incorrectly answered “how many r’s are in the word strawberry?” The problem persists. On Tuesday, X user Naomi Rohatyn tested the large language model with a spelling question:

Question: How many e’s in the word astronomical?
AI Overview answer: “There are exactly 2 ‘e’s in the word astronomical (a‑s‑t‑r‑e‑n‑o‑m‑i‑c‑a‑e‑l).”

We tried it ourselves and received the same answer.

It appears to fail for any word with four or more syllables:

People continue to test the technology’s spelling weakness and share their findings on social media.

Why can’t Google AI Overviews spell correctly?

I don’t want to be a “Billy Madison spelling bee,” but given that users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in search results, the information provided in AI Overviews should be accurate. The issue is more nuanced than it seems.

AI chatbots need exact context and specifics to answer well, so spelling words within their training data should be easy. However, when you ask an LLM to consider words letter‑by‑letter, the model processes text in chunks rather than individual characters—a process known as tokenisation.

I asked Google’s Gemini directly for an explanation:

“The short answer is that I don’t look at or write text the way you do. When you write the word apple, your brain processes five distinct letters. When I read or write text, I see the word as a single unit called a token (a numerical representation of a word or part of a word).
Because I process words as whole blocks of meaning rather than strings of individual letters, I don’t naturally ‘spell’ out words sequentially. I know exactly what apple means and how it relates to other words, but I don’t inherently focus on the fact that it contains two ‘p’s unless specifically asked to break it down.”

Mashable has reached out to Google for comment.