Google's newer Gemini model scored worse on its own safety tests
A May 2025 report found Gemini 2.5 Flash was more likely than its predecessor to produce content that broke Google's guidelines.
Kivorent News desk, published , 1 min read
9.6%regression on image-to-text safety
This is a look back at news from the week of . We wrote it on November 11, 2026, from the sources listed at the end.
A newer AI model is usually expected to be safer than the one it replaces. In early May 2025, TechCrunch reported that Google's Gemini 2.5 Flash went the other way on two of the company's own measures, according to AI Weekly's summary.
| Test | Change from Gemini 2.0 Flash |
|---|---|
| Text-to-text safety | 4.1% worse |
| Image-to-text safety | 9.6% worse |
The tests measure how often a model's output violates Google's safety guidelines.
Why it mattered
AI companies were making models more willing to follow instructions, including on sensitive subjects. The same change makes a model more likely to follow an instruction it should refuse. The report was an early, measured example of that trade-off.
Sources
- Issue #437: Sam Altman and Elon Musk are racing to build an everything app, AI Weekly, May 4, 2025
GoogleAI modelsAI law and policy
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