Google acknowledged the issue, saying that “counting within words has been a known challenge for LLMs,” but experts suggest the problem runs deeper than a simple bug. Researchers explain that AI language models don’t actually “read” text the way humans do. Instead, they break language into tokens and mathematical patterns, meaning they often struggle with tasks involving exact spelling or letter-by-letter analysis.

The controversy arrives as Google pushes aggressively toward an AI-first version of Search, replacing many traditional search results with generated summaries and conversational answers. Critics argue the repeated mistakes show that even advanced AI systems still lack reliability for factual precision, especially when users assume the responses are authoritative simply because they appear directly inside Google Search.