{"id":693921,"date":"2026-05-25T17:20:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T17:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/693921\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T17:20:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T17:20:13","slug":"gemini-for-homes-camera-smarts-may-have-a-localization-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/693921\/","title":{"rendered":"Gemini for Home’s camera smarts may have a localization problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"gemini<\/p>\n

Stephen Schenck \/ Android Authority<\/p>\n

TL;DR<\/p>\n

One Australian Reddit user shares all the misidentifications they keep getting from Gemini for Home cameras.
\nDespite there being no raccoons in Australia, it keeps mistaking cats for them.
\nOther issues include not characterizing vehicles in local terms.<\/p>\n

Gemini is very good at a lot of things, but its expansion into the smart home<\/a> has really served to highlight a few places where it still needs work. While some recent updates have focused on improving the camera UI<\/a>, there\u2019s clearly still work to be done on improving Gemini\u2019s subject recognition, as highlighted by one Google Home user from down under.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t want to miss the best from Android Authority?<\/p>\n

\"google\"google<\/a><\/p>\n

Over on Reddit\u2019s Google Home sub, user That_Car_Dude_Aus<\/a> shares a particularly Australian tale of Gemini\u2019s failings when it comes to cameras. The problem is all about what Gemini thinks it\u2019s seeing \u2014 and why it should know better.<\/p>\n

In Google\u2019s home turf of the US, for example, raccoons are a common nuisance, often sneaking through yards and digging around trash cans in their search for food. But they\u2019re also not an animal with global distribution, and there aren\u2019t racoons present in the wild in Australia. Despite this, Gemini kept misidentifying small animals like cats as raccoons \u2014 even with personalization turned on and the location given as Australia.<\/p>\n

\"google<\/p>\n

Stephen Schenck \/ Android Authority<\/p>\n

The flip side of that situation is happening for this user, too, with Gemini failing to recognize Australian fauna like kangaroos and wallabies, and instead categorizing them as (very ugly?) people. Neither one of these errors is great, and they feel like a consequence of AI not trained on a sufficiently international data set. Confoundingly, Gemini is able to recognize kangaroos (and even sometimes confuses wallabies for them) \u2014 it just doesn\u2019t seem to be doing so consistently.<\/p>\n

While we\u2019ll grant this user their complaints against Gemini\u2019s animal errors, some of their other issues feel a bit less problematic. For instance, they take particular offense to Gemini constantly labeling \u201cutes\u201d as regular trucks. If you\u2019re not familiar with this very Australian class of vehicle, a \u201cute,\u201d is an open-bed utility vehicle like an El Camino or a pickup truck. So, calling a pickup truck a truck doesn\u2019t quite seem like the mortal sin it\u2019s being presented as here \u2014 at least not to someone with an American vocabulary for vehicles.<\/p>\n

Still, it\u2019s very clear that Gemini for Home could use a bit of localization fine-tuning. Have you ever had Gemini wildly misidentify an animal or vehicle it spotted on one of your cameras? Tell us about what it got wrong down in the comments.<\/p>\n

Thank you for being part of our community. Read our\u00a0Comment Policy<\/a> before posting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stephen Schenck \/ Android Authority TL;DR One Australian Reddit user shares all the misidentifications they keep getting from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":693922,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,63,113,8577,61557,105],"class_list":["post-693921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-google","tag-google-gemini","tag-google-home","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=693921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/693922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=693921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=693921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=693921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}