Google’s Gemini debacle a make-or-break moment, analyst says

The bungled rollout of Google’s new artificial intelligence tool Gemini could end up being either a curse or a blessing for the Alphabet-owned tech giant, according to an analyst who owns the stock.

Seeking Alpha analyst Steven Fiorillo wrote in an assessment published Wednesday that Gemini will either be Google’s “destruction or its resurrection” after a series of public failures by the model led the company to pull the plug on some features and vow to fix it.

Fiorillo expressed his disappointment in the botched launch and argued it was completely avoidable before predicting, “This will either lead to Google’s destruction as trust from the end user is lost or lead to its resurrection as GOOGL utilizes this moment to crush its competition.”

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Fiorillo called it “negligent” for Google to release Gemini without assuring its accuracy, and voiced concerns over instances where the chatbot provided incorrect answers and generated inaccurate depictions of both current and historical events.

Google halted Gemini’s image generation feature nearly two weeks ago after users on social media flagged that it was creating inaccurate historical images that sometimes replaced White people with images of Black, Native American and Asian people.

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Google CEO Sundar Pichai told employees last week that the company is working “around the clock” to fix Gemini’s bias, calling the images generated by the model “completely unacceptable.”

The company reportedly plans to relaunch Gemini AI’s ability to generate images of people in the next few weeks, and Fiorilla said Google’s reputation could hinge on how that goes.

“All eyes will be on GOOGL as the ball is in their court,” he wrote. “GOOGL will either rise like a phoenix from the ashes or allow its competitors to capitalize on this moment and control the narrative about how the results from GOOGL can’t be trusted.”

Still, Fiorilla is bullish on the company, adding, “I believe Google won’t take this lying down, internal changes will be made, and it will dominate AI-enabled search.”