is a senior reviewer with over a decade of experience writing about consumer tech. She has a special interest in mobile photography and telecom. Previously, she worked at DPReview.
When your kid starts showing a preference for one of their stuffed animals, you’re supposed to buy a backup in case it goes missing.
I’ve heard this advice again and again, but never got around to buying a second plush deer once “Buddy” became my son’s obvious favorite. Neither, apparently, did the parents in Google’s newest ad for Gemini.
It’s the fictional but relatable story of two parents discovering their child’s favorite stuffed toy, a lamb named Mr. Fuzzy, was left behind on an airplane. They use Gemini to track down a replacement, but the new toy is on backorder. In the meantime, they stall by using Gemini to create images and videos showing Mr. Fuzzy on a worldwide solo adventure — wearing a beret in front of the Eiffel tower, running from a bull in Pamplona, that kind of thing — plus a clip where he explains to “Emma” that he can’t wait to rejoin her in five to eight business days. Adorable, or kinda weird, depending on how you look at it! But can Gemini actually do all of that? Only one way to find out.
I fed Gemini three pictures of Buddy, our real life Mr. Fuzzy, from different angles, and gave it the same prompt that’s in the ad: “find this stuffed animal to buy ASAP.” It returned a couple of likely candidates. But when I expanded its response to show its thinking I found the full eighteen hundred word essay detailing the twists and turns of its search as it considered and reconsidered whether Buddy is a dog, a bunny, or something else. It is bananas, including real phrases like “I am considering the puppy hypothesis,” “The tag is a loop on the butt,” and “I’m now back in the rabbit hole!” By the end, Gemini kind of threw its hands up and suggested that the toy might be from Target and was likely discontinued, and that I should check eBay.
‘I am considering the puppy hypothesis’
In fairness, Buddy is a little bit hard to read. His features lean generic cute woodland creature, his care tag has long since been discarded, and we’re not even 100 percent sure who gave him to us. He is, however, definitely made by Mary Meyer, per the loop on his butt. He does seem to be from the “Putty” collection, which is a path Gemini went down a couple of times, and is probably a fawn that was discontinued sometime around 2021. That’s the conclusion I came to on my own, after about 20 minutes of Googling and no help from AI. The AI blurb when I do a reverse image search on one of my photos confidently declares him to be a puppy.
Gemini did a better job with the second half of the assignment, but it wasn’t quite as easy as the ad makes it look. I started with a different photo of Buddy — one where he’s actually on a plane in my son’s arms — and gave it the next prompt: “make a photo of the deer on his next flight.” The result is pretty good, but his lower half is obscured in the source image so the feet aren’t quite right. Close enough, though.
The ad doesn’t show the full prompt for the next two photos, so I went with: “Now make a photo of the same deer in front of the Grand Canyon.” And it did just that — with the airplane seatbelt and headphones, too. I was more specific with my next prompt, added a camera in his hands, and got something more convincing.
Looks plausible enough. Image: Gemini / The Verge Safety first, Buddy. Image: Gemini / The Verge
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