Gemini on Google Home keeps confusing my dog ​​with a cat

The cat jumped up on my couch. Wait a moment. I don’t have a cat.

A jumping cat notification was sent to me by the Google Home app while I was at a party. It turned out it was my dog. This notification came a day after Google Gemini for Home was enabled in the Google Home app. It brings the power of vast language models to the astute home ecosystem, and one of the most useful features is more descriptive alerts from Nest security cameras. So instead of “I saw a person,” he might tell me that FedEx came and brought two packages.

In the two weeks since I let Gemini power my Google Home, what I’ve liked most is its ability to detect providers. Finally, I can ask in the Google Home app “How many packages arrived today” and get an exact answer. It’s nice to know that, according to my Nest Doorbell, it’s FedEx at the door and not a window replacement dealer. However, despite all their cleverness, Gemini does not want to understand that I do not have a cat at home.

A person has been seen

Google is not the only company that is enriching its astute home ecosystem with artificial intelligence. Amazon recently announced a feature on its Ring cameras called Search Party, which will exploit Ring outdoor cameras in the area to aid someone find their lost dog. (I don’t have to stretch to imagine something like this used for nefarious purposes.)

At the beginning of October Google updated voice assistant on astute home devices – some of which have been around for a decade – replacing Google Assistant Gemini. Mostly an assistant Is better. It understands many commands in one or two spoken sentences, and you can very easily ask it to automate something around your home without having to exploit the Routines tab in the Google Home app. And when I ask a basic question, it usually gives me some reliable answer without sending me to a Google search page.

Smarter camera alerts are actually more useful at a glance. Most of the time I have dismissed notifications of seeing a person because they are often just people walking by my house. Now the alerts actually say “A person is passing by” which gives me more confidence to dismiss them. Some alerts accurately say “Two people opened the gate,” although sometimes hallucinations appear: “A person is climbing the stairs,” even though no one actually did. (They just walked along the sidewalk). It makes a pretty exact note of when UPS, FedEx, or USPS is at the door, which is nice to know when I’m busy or on the road, so I can be sure I’ll find the package when I get home – I don’t have to look through alerts.

But thanks to my indoor security cameras, Gemini regularly says there’s a cat roaming around the house. This is my dog. Even in my Home Brief – Gemini’s summary of the day about what happened at home – Gemini says, “In the early morning, the white cat was active, came into the living room and sat on the couch.” It’s entertaining, especially considering my dog ​​hates cats.

CatDog

ScreenshotGoogle Home via Julian Chokkattu

Then you would think that I just could to say this smarter assistant: “Hey, I don’t have a cat. I have a dog,” and it will adjust its models and fix the error. Well, that’s exactly what I did. With the Ask Home feature, you can talk to Gemini and ask him anything about the home. Here you can ask him, for example, to configure automation. I asked him to turn on the living room lights when the cameras detected my wife or me coming home and understand what was happening. He even guessed that I wanted the lights to turn on only in the evening, even though I forgot to mention it.