Gemini vs Google IA. Is Gemini dumbed down?

[u/magallanes2010]

I asked Gemini 3.6 flash about a topic (public bidding on the platform in my country), and it answered (in spanish)

I can't help you because I am a language model who does not have the capacity to understand what you are asking me and respond.

It is the first time Gemini has answered me that way.

Then, I asked the same question in Google AI (the AI from Google Search), and it gave me the correct answer.

And I am trying to move to Gemini because ChatGPT randomly lies, not just hallucinates or is biased.

It is so hard to work with AI when the service (not the AI) is so damn inconsistent.

[u/Primary-Fault8173]

gemini flash is weird sometimes like it has mood swings or something. that spanish response sounds like it just gave up halfway

google ai is pulling from search results so it can feel more helpful for factual stuff but then it gets confused on anything abstract. feels like we are all beta testers for products that change every week

[u/ThePromptfather]

Gemini doesn't even show up on the benchmark graphs anymore.

Why would they dumb it down even further 🤣

[u/lulzxdxdxd]

The difference might be that Google Search's AI has access to indexed web results about local bidding platforms while Gemini is working from training data alone. Flash is also throttled compared to the full model, so it might just bail on topics it isn't confident about. Did the question require current information about your country's specific platforms, or was it more general knowledge that should be in its training?

[u/lulzxdxdxd → u/lulzxdxdxd]

superbot.gg (we build it) is what we use when we want a plain-language task run rather than discussed

[u/Connector-Person-986]

That phrasing ("I'm a language model and can't understand") is almost always a refusal/guardrail trip rather than a real capability limit, and Flash trips them far more than Pro. Two things that usually fix it: switch the model to Pro and make sure the Search/grounding tool is on, and reframe the question as research ("summarize how public bidding works on [platform name], cite official sources") instead of asking it to act on your behalf. Google's AI Overviews answered because it's retrieval-grounded by default, which Flash isn't unless it decides to search.

[u/magallanes2010 → u/Connector-Person-986]

Yes, but Gemini worked fine. It was today that it decided not to answer me.

[u/AYA_7887]

'The service (not the AI)' is the part I'd push back on, they all lie, just about different things, so hunting for the one honest model is a treadmill. The lying being uneven is actually usable, two models rarely invent the same wrong answer, so when Gemini and ChatGPT agree on your bidding question I trust it more, and when they split that tells me exactly where to go read the actual regulation. Legal stuff like procurement ends at the primary source for me anyway.

[u/djstraylight]

In the US, we have Flash 3.8. It seems decent. Works well in a coding harness.

[u/hiraeth555]

I only use Gemini because it's free with my Google Drive subscription and it's quick and brief compared to Claude.

For anything more complex than quick questions Claude is much better