On July 30, Google added a new feature to its expansive and invaluable reference tool, Google Earth, that was subsequently removed on July 31. The feature was AI-generated images, powered by Nano Banana 2, that let anyone take real-world satellite images and then use those as a basis for creating anything they could think of.
As reported by Digital Digging with Henk van Ess, he was able to create images of a fatal car crash in the streets of Amsterdam, a nuclear power plant in Iran, refugees at a border, and other images that could then be used to spread misinformation or simply add to the general feeling that AI is making it increasingly harder to differentiate between what's real and what's fake. With the tool, other publications were able to create realistic images showcasing the White House as a battlefield, and other dramatically fake images.
Popular Now: Shuhei Yoshida and Adam Boyes recreate PlayStation's famous disc-sharing meme, this time with no physical gameGoogle's own announcement on the addition was a little tone deaf too, as although each generated image contains a SynthID digital watermark, its own examples highlighted non-essential things like making the Colosseum in Italy look brand-new, or showing what a massive shopping mall would look like on an empty lot. Stuff that makes the obvious and inherent risk of being able to create any image you want from satellite imagery via a simple prompt a very real problem to solve.
And on that note, it seems that there were no restrictions at all on what could be generated or where, which is why the feature was removed so soon after being deployed.
"We know that people uniquely trust Google Earth for a reliable view of the world," the company writes in an update on the announcement post for Nano Banana coming to Google Earth. "We've seen geospatial professionals using this feature for a range of useful purposes; however, we've also seen people sharing screenshots of generated imagery that appear to violate our policies. So we're rolling back this feature in Google Earth while we work on implementing stronger guardrails. It's important to note that generated images didn't appear in the main Google Earth experience for others to see and were watermarked as AI-generated."
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Google removing the feature makes sense; however, it sounds like there are plans to bring it back sometime in the future.
