Why I could not use Gemini's Canvas like a Japanese taxi driver

Turns out, the AI hype is palpable on a tour from the airport to Kyoto. But maybe it is still not helping me with my team lead chores.

This post comes from Japan and so I am quite jetlagged at the other end of the world. But I am trying to keep my promise of "one week, one post". And sometimes inspiration for these posts comes in the unlikeliest places.

While I was driving from the airport to my mother's hometown Kyoto, the taxi driver told me about his passion for showing non-Japanese people around the city. And that he has experimented with AI as of recent to make his drives a bit more entertaining.

He wanted to explain to tourists why most buildings in Kyoto have height limits and why a lot of fast food chains have rather odd color schemes in the imperial city. But instead of using already existing material or drawing things by himself, he told me that he used Google's Gemini's Canvas to create a slide deck.

"Look, I got there within an afternoon", he told me quite happily and handed the folder to me. And while there are still little moments of "Engrish" on the slides ("Why It's Short&Calm"), I cannot help to say, this is definitely on par with most Japanese tourist brochures.

So, I wanted to try this out myself with a slightly different case. I wanted Gemini's Canvas to help me with a presentation that I have to give in two weeks. A presentation about our team in front of colleagues from Der Spiegel who in return will teach us something about how they handle project management. But well, I guess this presentation will be a bit more of my work rather than some AI magic with only finishing touches from my side.

After a brief system prompt of who we are as the Handelsblatt's data and visualization team, I asked Gemini to "do a small presentation that shows what we are known for, what we are good at, where we should get better and what are in general interesting topics of project management."

I somehow thought with the web at hand and also some of our work discussed elsewhere, this could be a good starting point. In my mind this was about to become a pingpong with an AI about what we look like from the outside and what we struggle with on the inside. But oh well.

Starting with the fact that the Gemini completely missed our quite everywhere featured orange color scheme of Handelsblatt, it also decided to attribute stories to us that were never ours.

Also, when I gave it a hint for what to look for in which places – may it be our team's work or my personal work – the content did not get any better. The only minor success was that after attaching our color scheme as a screenshot, the slides started to look a bit more like us. But still, I had to explain to the agent most of the things as deterministic as possible.

And just when I found a bit of a groove and accepted Gemini as more of a digital pen rather than an artificial co-team lead, the limit of tokens for the reasoning model was reached.

So, short recap:
-If you want to explain facts about a thing that is very widely documented like the architectural height limits in Kyoto...
If you want to have a playful set of slides that resemble schemes of slides and brochures in Japan...
...Google's Gemini might help you here quite a lot.

However, if you work in a niche like myself and want to present your very niche work and your very, very niche struggles, ... Gemini is not a great partner to brainstorm with. Maybe rather discuss these ideas with your charming taxi driver.

By the way, he is also expanding his English skills and promised me that he "will definitely go down a rabbit hole tonight on Youtube and look for videos about Berlin". And maybe that is the most important lesson of today's post. Keep being curious and learn from others. May it be your driver or your passenger.

Why I could not use Gemini's Canvas like a Japanese taxi driver

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