Gemini, Google’s flagship artificial intelligence platform, is reportedly breaking the Google TV experience for some users. As reported by Tom’s Guide, several users of the smart TV platform have taken to Reddit with videos and photos of a novel search loop glitch in action, which appears to cause a perpetual cycle of displaying the onboarding process for Gemini-powered search.

As per these Redditors, hitting the search button within Google TV prompts a splash screen to appear on-screen, which reads: “Meet Gemini for TV, your upgraded AI voice assistant.” Despite going through with the wizard, the splash screen reappears after each attempt to search the system, effectively breaking the search function altogether.

The common through-line here is that the issue is impacting Google TV Streamer (4K) owners, and specifically during the onboarding process upon unboxing the unit for the first time. Some commenters have suggested uninstalling the latest Google TV update from within Settings to temporarily rectify the issue, though this workaround has proven unreliable for others who have chimed into the conversation.

As of the time of writing, Google hasn’t made any official comment on this Gemini-rooted search loop glitch. It’s unclear just how widespread the issue is at the moment, but hopefully the company gets ahead of things with a timely software patch before it has the chance to grow into an issue that affects more Android-powered smart TV owners.

Operating system

Google TV

Ease of use

High

Smart assistants

Google Assistant

Ad presence

Moderate

App availability

Very wide

Notable features

AI-curated content; Chromecast built-in

Google’s flagship Android-based operating system for smart television sets, with access to a growing selection of streaming services, applications, and Gemini AI features.

A bump in the road for Google TV

Gemini AI is supposed to make life easier, not harder

Across the breadth of its tech ecosystem, Google has been in the process of transitioning away from the older Google Assistant to its newer large language model (LLM) based Gemini AI assistant for some time now. In the smart TV space, the company began the rollout of Gemini onto its first-party Google TV Streamer set-top box back in September of last year, starting in the US and Canada. Over time, additional jurisdictions have followed, and other devices running the Google TV operating system have also slowly started to adopt Gemini in earnest.

While it’s true that Gemini is more capable than the Google Assistant, the switch over has been somewhat bumpy. It’s taken the Android mobile version of Gemini a fair bit of time to incorporate some of its predecessor’s existing capabilities, and the big-screen TV experience has been uneven in its own right. Google Assistant’s reliance on basic language processing and pre-configured scripts might be technically more rudimentary, but it can sometimes feel more efficient than relying on LLM’s, which can suffer from hallucinations, query response delays, and other mishaps.

The irony of this latest Gemini-rooted search loop glitch is that it’s an example of AI actively getting in the way of the end-user experience as opposed to enriching it. The promise of AI is that it’ll make our lives easier, but deployment issues like this one are only adding fuel to the fire of growing AI fatigue in the consumer space. Of course, it would be a mistake to downplay the potential for greatness in the AI space, but it’s hard to think about that right now when something as vital as search is a broken experience, and when AI is the culprit.