AI is taking over, or so we're told – but it would seem that the technology, while impressive, isn't quite at the point where it will replace video game historians.
We've been messing around with Google's Gemini AI assistant, and have found that it often makes glaring mistakes when it comes to summarizing video game history.
For example, when asking Gemini to sum up the achievements of Argonaut Software – the defunct British studio responsible for Croc and Star Fox – Google's AI assistant incorrectly claims that it was founded by Ian Bell (co-creator of Elite), Jon Hare (founder of Sensible Software), and Oliver Jowett – completely omitting Jez San, the company's actual founder. It also lists the company's location as Cambridge, which is incorrect – it was established in Colindale, London.
A second attempt at the same prompt even adds in Oli Frey, the late artist behind the Zzap!64 and Crash magazines – and someone who had absolutely nothing to do with Argonaut.
Gemini makes a total fudge of listing the company's key games, too; in one attempt at answering the prompt, it attributes International Karate to Argonaut, as well as Stunt Car Racer and Dynamite Headdy. (Spoiler alert: none of these games were created by Argonaut.) While Star Fox is listed in one of Gemini's replies, another pass removes it, and no mention is made of Starglider whatsoever. Another attempt adds Perfect Dark, Blast Corps and Ape Escape to Argonaut's achievements. Doh.
While Gemini did better with more recent video game history – presumably because it has a much larger pool of information to use / steal from, it consistently struggled with more obscure questions.
When asked about Elite Systems, one of the oldest companies still active in the world of games, it falsely claimed that the company was founded in 1982 (it was founded in 1984) by Dave and Mike Jones (and not Richard and Steve Wilcox, the actual founders) and that it was responsible for creating Elite – presumably confusing the company name with Ian Bell and David Braben's seminal space exploration epic.
To be fair to Google, it does state that "Gemini may display inaccurate info, including about people, so double-check its responses," but it's somewhat embarrassing that even with access all of the information online about the company (much of which is being scraped without the permission of the original authors), this much-hyped AI assistant still can't get its facts right.