Google’s latest push to remake search around artificial intelligence has hit an awkward snag. Ask its AI Overview how many Ps appear in “Google” and it answers two. The system then spells the company name with an extra letter or drops one entirely. These aren’t isolated slips. They expose a stubborn weakness in the very models Google has bet its future on. Token Limits Meet Real-World Scrutiny Users on X noticed the pattern almost immediately after the latest updates rolled out. One post showed the AI confidently declaring exactly one “r” in the word “poop.” Another caught it claiming two “d”s in “journalism” while spelling the word j-o-u-r-n-a-d-i-s-m. Even a query about the U.S. president’s last name produced a single P but rendered it t-r-p-u-m. The mistakes spread quickly across social platforms, turning what should have been a technical footnote into public embarrassment. But why does this keep happening? Large language models break text into tokens.…