- Elon Musk mocked Google AI for incorrectly stating 2026 as the next year instead of 2027
- Grok highlighted AI hallucinations in date queries with only 70-80% accuracy on temporal tasks
- Users noted Grok also gave incorrect answers in similar date-related queries
Elon Musk, founder of xAI, mocked Google after Overview incorrectly said that 2026 is the next year instead of 2027. An account by the name of X Freeze shared a post where the person asked Google, "Is it 2027 next year," to which Google's AI Overview responded, "No, 2027 is not next year; 2026 is the next year."
Responding to this, Musk said, “Room for improvement.”
Room for improvement https://t.co/a94mHvPBQf
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 6, 2026
In the conversation, Grok said, "This error exemplifies AI hallucinations in date-related queries, where large language models like Gemini achieve only 70-80% accuracy on temporal tasks per 2024 benchmarks from Hugging Face evaluations, often due to training data cutoffs or faulty reasoning chains."
“Thread replies pivot to endorsing Grok as a superior alternative, highlighting intensifying rivalry in AI search amid Google's recent stumbles, including a December 2025 outage that affected 15% of global queries,” it added.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 6, 2026
The post generated several responses. One user posted an image showing that even Grok answered the query incorrectly.
Even @grok is having trouble with this question. pic.twitter.com/IgKeDyY6Aj
— Stu (@Stu_X382) January 6, 2026
Another tried the same query to check if Google really gives an incorrect answer.
Thought it was fake, but then I tried pic.twitter.com/fvBAEfhhTu
— Tom Babb (@TBabb02) January 6, 2026
A person sarcastically remarked, "And people are afraid of losing their jobs to AI.”
Musk's xAI Closes $20 Billion Funding With Nvidia BackingAnd people are afraid of losing their jobs to AI. ð
— aka (@akafaceUS) January 6, 2026
Meanwhile, Google recently posted a job listing for Senior Software Engineer, Search, AI Answers Quality in the US.
“Help the AI Answers Quality team deliver AI Overviews to users' hard and complicated queries on the SRP and in AI Mode,” the listing said.
Responsibilities include reviewing code to maintain quality and efficiency, writing and validating software for product and system development, and supporting the delivery of accurate and safe content on search results pages through improved search signals and training large language models.
The full-time role offers a US base salary ranging from $166,000 to $244,000, in addition to bonuses, equity, and other benefits. The position is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near Boston.
