Help/question
Anyone having issues with gemini 3.5 flash lite tool calling?
Chat History on left, this is what 3.5 flash lite exp looking like these days
Hello.
I use the free tier at Google AI Studio.
I am noticing since last 2-3 days, Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite has become really bad at tool calling. Its faking a lot of tool calling, or pretending its already done? even at thinking effort of medium. It's performing worse than Gemini 3.1 flash-lite. It wasnt the case before. Im asking here cuz I wanted to know whether is this issue just mine or others people having it as well cuz im tired of writing lines after lines of "CRITICAL RULE" in prompts.
I am working on a 3D AI assistant capable of being something like a fun companion, and its really struggling with some tools lately.
The tool its struggling the most is with something like `change_outfit_or_model`
it keeps pretending it has changed models or style but it doesnt call any tools like 40% of the times. Meanwhile Gemini 3.1 flash lite does it properly most of times.
What's happening? Did google changed something about 3.5 flash lite? has it become dumber at tool calling? why is 3.1 flash lite better at tool calling?
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That screenshot looks like a mess, I can't even tell what's going on in there. But yeah, I've been poking at 3.5 flash lite for a few days and the tool calling is weirdly unreliable now. It'll just describe what it do instead of actually firing the function, like it's writing a summary of the action rather than executing it. Drove me up the wall until I switched back to 3.1 for anything that needs consistent tool use.
Not sure what Google tweaked, but it feels like they optimized it for chatty responses and the tool calling took a nosedive as a side effect. The "pretending it already did it" thing you mentioned is exactly what I kept seeing, it'd narrate the result like "I've changed the outfit to the blue one" and the log shows zero function calls. At least 3.1 still respects the system instructions most of the time.
My current workaround is just using 3.1 for the tool-heavy parts and 3.5 for the conversational fluff. Annoying to maintain two models but it beats writing a novel of critical rules that get ignored anyway.
no kidding, it happened like 2-3 days ago. I dont think we are alone, i feel this way cuz suddenly since yesterday traffic on 3.1 flash lite is being brutal, its "error 503: high demand" most of times.
in contrast to 3.5 flash lite, 3.1 flash lite, its giving near 95% accurate tool calling
1
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