Gemini 3 Flash is smart but when it doesnt know, it makes stuff up anyway

Date:
Mon, 22 Dec 2025 21:45:00 +0000

Description:
Gemini 3 Flash frequently makes up answers rather than saying I dont know."

FULL STORY ======================================================================Gemini
3 Flash often invents answers instead of admitting when it doesnt know something The problem arises with factual or highstakes questions But it
still tests as the most accurate and capable AI model

Gemini 3 Flash is fast and clever. But if you ask it something it doesnt actually know something obscure or tricky or just outside its training it will almost always try to bluff its way through, according to a recent evaluation from the independent testing group Artificial Analysis.

It seems Gemini 3 Flash hit 91% on the hallucination rate portion of the AA-Omniscience benchmark. That means when it didnt have the answer, it still gave one anyway, almost all the time, one that was entirely fictional.

AI chatbots making things up has been an issue since they first debuted. Knowing when to stop and say I don't know is just as important as knowing how to answer in the first place. Currently, Google Gemini 3 Flash AI doesnt do that very well. That's what the test is for: seeing whether a model can differentiate actual knowledge from a guess.

Lest the number distract from reality, it should be noted that Geminis high hallucination rate doesnt mean 91% of its total answers are false. Instead,
it means that in situations where the correct answer would be I dont know, it fabricated an answer 91% of the time. Thats a subtle but important distinction, but one that has real-world implications, especially as Gemini
is integrated into more products like Google Search. Ok, it's not only me. Gemini 3 Flash has a 91% hallucination rate on the Artificial Analysis Omniscience Hallucination Rate benchmark!?Can you actually use this for anything serious?I wonder if the reason Anthropic models are so good at
coding is that they hallucinate much https://t.co/b3CZbX9pHw pic.twitter.com/uZnF8KKZD4 December 18, 2025

This result doesn't diminish the power and utility of Gemini 3. The model remains the highest-performing in general-purpose tests and ranks alongside, or even ahead of, the latest versions of ChatGPT and Claude. It just errs on the side of confidence when it should be modest.

The overconfidence in answering crops up with Gemini's rivals as well. What makes Geminis number stand out is how often it happens in these uncertainty scenarios, where theres simply no correct answer in the training data or no definitive public source to point to. Hallucination Honesty

Part of the issue is simply that generative AI models are largely word-prediction tools, and predicting a new word is not the same as
evaluating truth. And that means the default behavior is to come up with a
new word, even when saying "I don't know" would be more honest.

OpenAI has started addressing this and getting its models to recognize what they dont know and say so clearly. Its a tough thing to train, because reward models dont typically value a blank response over a confident (but wrong)
one. Still, OpenAI has made it a goal for the development of future models.

And Gemini does usually cite sources when it can. But even then, it doesnt always pause when it should. That wouldnt matter much if Gemini were just a research model, but as Gemini becomes the voice behind many Google features, being confidently wrong could affect quite a lot.

Theres also a design choice here. Many users expect their AI assistant to respond quickly and smoothly. Saying Im not sure or Let me check on that
might feel clunky in a chatbot context. But its probably better than being misled. Generative AI still isn't always reliable, but double-checking any AI response is always a good idea.

Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds. Make sure to click the
Follow button!

And of course you can also follow TechRadar on TikTok for news, reviews, unboxings in video form, and get regular updates from us on WhatsApp too.



======================================================================
Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/ai-platforms-assistants/gemini-3-flash-is-smart-but- when-it-doesnt-know-it-makes-stuff-up-anyway


--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 (Linux/64)
* Origin: tqwNet Technology News (1337:1/100)