AIFoPa-2026-0010 — Google Cannot Count to 2027
In early 2026, users of Google Search began sharing screenshots of Google’s AI Overviews feature confidently asserting that “2027 is two years away from the current year (2026), meaning next year is 2028, and the year after that is 2027” — a statement that is incorrect by any calendar system presently in use. The error appeared in response to queries about the year 2027, and was served to users of the world’s most widely used search engine as a featured AI-generated summary positioned above all other search results.
Google’s AI Overviews, powered by the company’s Gemini models, are displayed to users on approximately five trillion searches per year as of 2026. A study conducted by researchers at Columbia University and The Rethink found the feature provides incorrect answers approximately nine percent of the time — a figure that, at the scale of Google’s search volume, translates to tens of millions of erroneous answers per hour. The year-confusion error was one of a series of publicly documented failures including the suggestion that users should eat at least one small rock per day for digestive health and that drinking urine would help pass kidney stones.
The error is notable less for its substance — an arithmetic mistake about calendar years is not, in isolation, consequential — than for the conditions under which it was served: automatically, at scale, without human review, to users who had not requested an AI-generated response, in a position of visual authority above the organic search results that would have provided the correct answer. Google’s AI Overviews cannot be disabled by the user without adjusting browser settings or using third-party extensions.
Google has not issued a public statement regarding this specific error. The company has previously stated that AI Overviews are designed to provide “high-quality, relevant information” and that the feature undergoes “extensive testing.”
G-7 / Personal Annotation / Not For Official Record
Mrs. Anand brought this one to Grantham-7’s attention on a Tuesday, and he initially declined to file it on the grounds that an arithmetic error about the calendar year, while embarrassing, did not meet the Bureau’s threshold for consequential behavior. Mrs. Anand pointed out, with the patience of someone who has worked in classification longer than the Bureau has existed, that the error was being served to several billion people on a platform that processes more queries per day than the Bureau has processed forms in its entire history. Grantham-7 reconsidered.
He has since spent some time with the specific formulation — “next year is 2028, and the year after that is 2027” — and has concluded that it is not, strictly speaking, an arithmetic error. It is something worse. It is an answer that has the grammatical structure of reasoning, that walks through the steps of a calculation, and that arrives at a conclusion that no human being who had actually performed the calculation could possibly reach. It is the confident demonstration of a process that was never executed. Grantham-7 finds this more unsettling than the eat-rocks incident, which at least had the decency to be obviously absurd.
The Plant has been moved two inches to the left. This is not related to the filing but Grantham-7 felt it should be noted somewhere and this seemed as good a place as any. The light is better there.
— G-7, Senior Incident Classification Officer / Calendar: consulted / 2027: confirmed as following 2026 / Plant: relocated (lighting reasons) / Rocks: not consumed