According to Mashable, Google’s AI Overview has been incorrectly claiming for three months that Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is a “fictional video game that does not exist.” The AI specifically describes a game with a November 14, 2025 release date, a 2035 setting continuing from Black Ops 2, and modes including co-op campaign, multiplayer, and Zombies – all accurate details about the actual game. Black Ops 7 is the 22nd mainline Call of Duty entry and eighth in the Black Ops series, currently sitting at a dismal 1.8 user score on Metacritic. The issue was first spotted by a Reddit user in November and persists on mobile devices, though Google’s standard search correctly recognizes the game exists. Both Google and Activision-Blizzard haven’t commented on the ongoing glitch.
When AI Can’t Tell What’s Real
Here’s the thing that really gets me about this situation. The AI isn’t just wrong – it’s confidently wrong while being technically correct about the details. It knows the release date, the setting, the game modes. Everything it says about Black Ops 7 is accurate except for that one crucial judgment call: “this game doesn’t exist.” It’s like someone perfectly describing your living room furniture while insisting your house is imaginary.
And this isn’t an isolated incident. The same AI system correctly identifies other recent game releases like Yakuza Kiwami 2, but completely fumbles Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero – first calling it a mobile game, then backtracking. So what’s happening here? Basically, we’re seeing the limitations of AI systems that were trained on historical data struggling with real-time information. They’re great at telling you about established facts, but when something new drops, the system gets confused.
Why This Matters Beyond Video Games
Now, you might think “who cares if an AI gets confused about a video game?” But look at the pattern here. We’ve already seen how AI chatbots can spread dangerous misinformation during breaking news events, like when Grok falsely claimed the Charlie Kirk shooting was a hoax. As more people treat these systems as on-demand fact-checkers, especially during volatile situations, these “small” glitches become much more concerning.
Think about it – if an AI can’t reliably tell you whether a major video game release is real three months after its announcement, how can we trust it during an actual emergency? When people are searching for information about developing situations, they need accuracy, not confident-sounding fiction. The Reddit discussion about this glitch shows how easily these systems can mislead even tech-savvy users.
The Trust Problem With AI Assistants
So where does this leave us? We’re in this weird transition period where AI tools are being pushed as reliable information sources, but they’re still making basic errors that a human wouldn’t. The problem isn’t that they’re wrong sometimes – humans get things wrong too. The problem is that they’re wrong in ways that don’t make intuitive sense, which makes them harder to trust.
I can’t help but wonder if we’re expecting too much from these systems too soon. They’re being positioned as replacements for search engines and research tools, but they’re clearly not ready for prime time when it comes to current events or newly released content. Maybe we need to adjust our expectations – use them for what they’re good at, but maintain healthy skepticism for anything time-sensitive.
In the meantime, if you’re searching for information about new products, games, or breaking news, you might want to double-check that AI response. Because as Black Ops 7 players dealing with that 1.8 user score can tell you, sometimes reality is stranger than fiction – even when AI insists otherwise.
