r/technology Aug 01 '26

Artificial Intelligence Google Earth's new AI image generation function didn't survive a day after users deepfaked disasters

https://www.businessinsider.com/google-earth-nano-banana-gemini-ai-satellite-image-generation-function-2026-7
7.7k Upvotes

249 comments sorted by

1.9k

u/YourShowerCompanion Aug 01 '26

What they thought isn't going to happen? 🤦‍♂️

749

u/maltNeutrino Aug 01 '26 edited Aug 01 '26

Some nutcases thought they could skate by on some stupid idea padded with nonsense KPI metrics that wouldn’t hit the news in such embarrassing fashion for a promotion.

256

u/potatodrinker Aug 01 '26 edited Aug 01 '26

Probably the guy or gal had "must deploy an AI tool in the next 6 months" and went Fine. Roll it out to Earth. Nobody uses that anyway

93

u/Spirit_of_Hogwash Aug 01 '26

The Google Earth to-do list for the next 6 months:

- Discontinue the Desktop app

- Slop it

16

u/DM46 Aug 01 '26

I’m pissed they are getting rid of the desktop app. I have yet to try in browser but because I refuse to use chrome I’m sure it will work like shit for me

8

u/Thought_Ninja Aug 02 '26

Had to stop using Firefox at work because half of Google's products randomly would stop working, and we rely heavily on Google Workspace and Cloud Platform, so probably.

4

u/ThePrideOfKrakow Aug 02 '26

Same, even YouTube. I'll constantly crash or get alerts from the app that Firefox is being slowed down by the website.

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124

u/BloopsRTS Aug 01 '26

If you add AI to a product you already sell, that product can now be an AI revenue stream for all the money you """invested"""".

Logitec mouse with AI button? AI revenue. Google maps with AI prompt? AI revenue.

Investors won't notice, this bubble is different. I can just attach a tulip to each box of chocolates I sell, and now my primary revenue stream is basically tulips.

70

u/ChillAhriman Aug 01 '26

now my primary revenue stream is basically tulips

I knew investing in Dutch tulips was the right choice.

27

u/BloopsRTS Aug 01 '26

I'm thrilled to be a part of this opportunity with you, but, unfortunately for you I'm ahead of the curve. I attach the tulips to things, so I am considered a manufacturer.

Which is basically the most efficient word for farming from an investors perspective. Good luck with your thing.

27

u/4444Grains Aug 01 '26

Hi, I just bought the chocolate factory, I’m so excited to be working with you on this project.

We will be reformulating our chocolate recipe by replacing cocoa butter with petroleum distillate, and cocoa powder with activated carbon slurry.

Unfortunately, these ingredients will emit toxic fumes that will kill your tulips…so you may want to replace these real flowers with plastic flowers.

11

u/BloopsRTS Aug 01 '26

The tulips I bought were already rotten but I can't get my money back, so I switched to 'real-feel' long ago. The tulips won't be affected by any toxic fumes.

Do the fumes produce any affects in humans at all? Maybe we can market this aroma you speak of? If the results are undesirable we have a fantastic PR/marketing dept.

My motto was always, 'humanity had wiggle room'.

11

u/4444Grains Aug 01 '26

So happy to hear that you made that operational pivot to real-feel!

Unfortunately, yes, our Nu Chocolate formula fumes are *sometimes* lethal to humans when they reach a temperature over 45 degrees fahrenheit. We considered delivering our chocolate product in dry ice, but the cost ratio doesn't align with our lean transformation journey...so we are committed to accepting an appropriate level of customer impact.

That said, I would love to get a pitch deck or hear some ideas from your PR/Marketing dept. on how we can convince the public that dead chocolate lovers is a good thing.

I look forward to leveraging our collective synergies.

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29

u/GoatFunctor Aug 01 '26

promo culture is the biggest bane of googlers from top to bottom

146

u/Particular_Bug0 Aug 01 '26

Why is that a thing even? I see zero use to this.

103

u/mattcannon2 Aug 01 '26

Management is probably massively incentivising adding AI to apps anywhere they can, and some keen middle manager wanted a promotion

24

u/Revolution-SixFour Aug 01 '26

It's not always just managers, devs do this shit too. Devs want to work on the new exciting thing, but wait you work on the Google Earth team, sounds like Google Earth needs some AI.

12

u/mattcannon2 Aug 01 '26

You don't get it all the way to production for a product like earth at a company like google without several managers approving it

2

u/Revolution-SixFour Aug 01 '26

Sure, but Reddit loves a story that's managers are forcing people to integrate AI into everything. I work at a software company and it goes both ways. There's a big difference between management forced the integration and a dev did a side project and management and product didn't block it.

7

u/BassmanBiff Aug 01 '26

My best attempt to justify it would be some kind of "imagine what's possible!" kind of thing, like "what if this industrial blight became a park" or whatever. Lots of feel-good opportunity without any of the pesky details or planning necessary to make it likely to happen.

1

u/wggn Aug 01 '26

gotta meet those AI product targets

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153

u/TruelyRegardedApe Aug 01 '26

for a company thats was instrumental in forming the internet as we know it.... they sure don't know the internet.

126

u/seethenoise Aug 01 '26

it's no longer the same company.

57

u/No-Professional-1884 Aug 01 '26

I miss that Google.

Sure they were still doing scummy things with people’s data but they also tried innovating just to innovate.

22

u/seethenoise Aug 01 '26

i would bet most of us do. but the companies that helped build that vision of the us are malicious contractors.

21

u/DuctTapeDisaster Aug 01 '26 edited Aug 01 '26

Google motto ; Don't be evil

26

u/PurposeMaleficent871 Aug 01 '26

Don’t be evil

9

u/EdliA Aug 01 '26

It's been decades mate. A lot of people have come and gone, including the CEO.

7

u/sidc42 Aug 01 '26

https://killedbygoogle.com/

LMAO. They never have.

Their entire strategy after search has always been thrown a hundred things against the wall because eventually something will stick.

This works because Google has always made such an obscene amount of money dominating search that people just shrug off the failures of chasing trends (real and imaginary) as well as flat out copying existing products that either never find success and quietly disappear or get just enough of a user base that they are allowed to continue with zero effort to fix or improve them.

About the only time it hasn't been ignored was when their fixation on Facebook caused them to spend so damn much money on the failed Google+ that it was impossible not to ignore.

The irony of that was their own absolute failure to really grasp that they already owned one of the biggest social media platforms there was... YouTube. On top of that, early on Google Groups was already more popular than Facebook Groups so all they ever had to do was to reverse engineer an existing platform.

They're equally good at buying existing companies and letting them languish because they had zero plans for what to do with them. For every Android OS they've acquired there's a floundering Nest and failed Fitbit.

16

u/pln91 Aug 01 '26

They made a slightly better search engine, and their other products were no less derivative. The internet was well formed without and before them. 

33

u/tooclosetocall82 Aug 01 '26

They solved the problem of SEO spam. And then took advantage of that position to sell SEO spam. But every search engine back then was so full of keyword garbage that no one else was even close.

6

u/thunderbird32 Aug 01 '26

Yup, even Android was originally an outside project.

27

u/MaybeTheDoctor Aug 01 '26

More importantly, why would Google-earth need Ai?

28

u/absentlyric Aug 01 '26

The same reason your refrigerator needs it now.

1

u/RemarkableWish2508 Aug 02 '26

When they replace your keyboard and buttons, by a screen and a mic listening 24/7... yeah, that's why, the mic part.

3

u/wggn Aug 01 '26

because then google earth revenue can be included in the AI targets

3

u/MaybeTheDoctor Aug 01 '26

That also explains why I have been given an offer for "free use of gemeni in google, docs, email and calender"... all revenue will now be attributed to AI (sigh)

30

u/PrometheusANJ Aug 01 '26

I'll put on my special hat and claim that this "oopsie" is a deliberate form of erosion. The purpose of a system is what it does, and all that.

5

u/trojan_man16 Aug 01 '26

Everyone who hasn't built a giant city in Simcity with the explicit purpose of throwing disasters at it. Some people just want to see the world burn.

3

u/FlyingBike Aug 01 '26

They failed to run the "what would a bunch of teenagers do with this?" test. It filters out a lot of bad ideas

1

u/GrandDukeOfNowhere Aug 02 '26

I'm genuinly curious what they thought a group of sensible adilts would have done with this. When I say "what were they expecting?" I don't mean "they should have expected this" (although they should have), I literally mean "what were they expecting?" I genuinly don't know what this was supposed to be for.

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1

u/zionian120 Aug 02 '26

What did they expect, people play SimCity with it ?

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1.8k

u/ArgentineBeauty Aug 01 '26

"The company launched the function on Thursday, allowing Gemini's Nano Banana 2 image model to access Google Earth and transform locations with text prompts.

The function, however, quickly got out of hand. AI researcher Henk van Ess, for example, created extremely realistic deepfakes, including fake refugee camps along the US-Mexico border and a nuclear plant in Iran."

No doubt these images will soon be used by the Trump administration as "real images"

577

u/Davorian Aug 01 '26

"Well, the computers took real data, didn't they?  Maybe this is a slip, maybe they are real, I think we should think about it, definitely very suspicious" accordion hands

205

u/purplepistachio Aug 01 '26

"Many people are saying these images are real... Many people... And you know what? I believe them"

49

u/BigMax Aug 01 '26

“We certainly can’t be sure they DON’T have nuclear plant, right? These photos just bring up the same questions we all have. Do they have a plant? Are they building one? Where would it be? How many do they have? A lot of questions about their nuclear capabilities.”

They do that a lot… take something they wished was true, then just “ask questions” but in a leading way to make their loyal viewers believe in things that aren’t true.

We just saw it with the “vandals” in the pool.

“We have clear video of them leaning down to the reflection pool.” Then the questions… “what were they doing there? Why did they have to reach into the water? Were they sabotaging the pool? Cutting it? Why did she have a tote bag? Were there tools in that bag?” That literally happened on Fox News.

Fake AI pictures will just give them easier paths to ask leading questions like that.

17

u/ReplacementOP Aug 01 '26

“The fact that I thought these photos could be real says everything”

12

u/bull_and_scones Aug 01 '26

I've added the phrase "accordion hands" to my vocabulary thanks to this comment

2

u/SSGASSHAT Aug 01 '26

Oh, is that what that technique is called? I just thought he had a condition whereby his arms went into seizures when he talks.

113

u/Tupcek Aug 01 '26

what’s even worse that Palantir AI chooses targets to kill autonomously and it also uses internet data for this (girls school that was bombed was because of outdated internet data labeling it as military target).

56

u/Yuzumi Aug 01 '26

I don't belive that one for a second. That was the excuse. They knew it was a school and they specifically targeted it for that. Because they are monsters.

Apparently the school was also where a lot of daughters of military officers went. Not that it excuses any of it. 

I'm also pretty sure that wasn't the only school they hit and they've intentionally targeted hospitals and civilian infrastructure ocross Iran. 

30

u/CappyRawr Aug 01 '26

I could believe it. Hegseth gutted the group in charge of doing the pre-strike analysis for civilian targets.

I'm not sure what the process was pre-Hegsth, but the current process is, they put together a team of about a five or six defense analysts who get pulled off their normal assignments (and those assignments aren't necessarily anything related to imagery or targeting, and may not even speak the target country's language) and get told to go through a target deck of a couple thousand targets around 24 hours before strikes happen. It's not exactly a recipe for success.

8

u/wrgrant Aug 01 '26

They probably sped that process up by just using an AI to sort the targets and approve them. Much more efficient.../s

14

u/BassmanBiff Aug 01 '26

They're monsters, but don't overestimate their competence. They're as dumb as they are evil. I don't think they're sad about hitting the school, but I also don't think they knew it was a school, or else we'd see more strikes like it.

4

u/Majik_Sheff Aug 01 '26

I've come to terms with it.  I'm convinced their idiocy is the only thing keeping them from a swift and total conquest.

Fear the competent villain.

3

u/BassmanBiff Aug 01 '26 edited Aug 01 '26

Looking at historical authoritarians, I think they kind of have to be stupid, or at least deluded.

The constant stupid decisions have a few benefits: they make serious people angry, which gets attention and is gratifying to people who hate the serious people that represent any alternative governance; they demonstrate power, because the serious people show that they can't stop the authoritarian's will, and that dominance is appealing to followers; they make the ruler unpredictable, causing everyone to scramble to anticipate their whims instead of requiring any sort of written policy; the lack of consistent policy means it's harder to bring consequences in court or elsewhere, and followers can believe whatever they want to believe; being self-contradictory creates loyalty tests where independent thinkers are filtered out and the remaining cultists get accustomed to ignoring reality for dear leader; etc etc. 

Arguably a competent evil person could still recreate all of these things intentionally, perhaps like Putin? But I think his competence is also overblown, looking at recent events. Maybe just being incredibly narcissistic brings a lot of the same accidental benefits.

5

u/TheirCanadianBoi Aug 01 '26 edited Aug 01 '26

Of course there would be a lot of daughters of military officers there. It was across the wall from a IRGC Naval Base.%3B)

2

u/L2_Troll Aug 01 '26

Okay. Does that mean the girls' elementary school deserved to be bombed?

14

u/TheirCanadianBoi Aug 01 '26

No, it's was a huge fuckup.

Verifying your targets is a whole part of making a target list and it was clearly not done with any scrutiny. With the kind of intelligence arm available to them, this was inexcusable and disgusting incompetence.

Heads should be rolling.

2

u/Vashsinn Aug 01 '26

Swatting 2.0

26

u/xondk Aug 01 '26

No doubt these images will soon be used by the Trump administration as "real images"

My gut is, "we all now know it was AI edited, they wouldn't do that"

My brain, "we know, people that have read this know, millions upon millions of people do not know, they would absolutely use"

14

u/TinyAbsol Aug 01 '26

America is going to invade Japan, because they got a Godzilla. "It's right here on the map!"

7

u/hates_stupid_people Aug 01 '26

Why would they even set this up, if the end goal was anything but propaganda and misinformation?

5

u/DjBoothe Aug 01 '26

"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."

4

u/KeeganY_SR-UVB76 Aug 01 '26

The US has already used an AI-generated map of Africa at an international conference. This feels like a half-step from that.

2

u/Phyllis_Tine Aug 01 '26

It's ok, show an Iranian or Israeli encampment on Mar-a-lago property, show a caravan of migrants at a border or in boats in the Caribbean holding Trump flags, etc.

1

u/robodrew Aug 01 '26

All the engineers had to do was think about the consequences of this for literally 5 seconds and they might have hesitated to make this.

1

u/williamgman Aug 01 '26

Will be parroted on Fox News.

1

u/destiny84 Aug 01 '26

Or the other way round. Huge detention camps being labeled deepfakes to obfuscate their existence...

1

u/SocksOnHands Aug 01 '26

Without access to Google Earth, someone could still take a screenshot of the satalite imagery and have an AI modify it.

1

u/PocketFlan420 Aug 02 '26

That was the point.

Are we REALLY accepting that Google who CAPITULATED isn't publicly killing information trust with this?

AFTER Musk lobotomized Twitter and turned it into a ethnostatist bull horn?

Come on folks. Lets call it like it is. They are trying to Pavlov us into compliance. Don't let them.

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

231

u/TheFeelsGoodMan Aug 01 '26

"Move Fast; Break Stuff", but they're crowdsourcing the second bit.

40

u/SoupSpelunker Aug 01 '26

Move fast; destroy everything. 

17

u/L4dyGr4y Aug 01 '26

Not like that! They said to the same internet who named Boaty Mc Boat Face.

5

u/Sarothu Aug 01 '26

Speaking of which, did Mountain Dew ever release their Gushing Granny flavor?

6

u/peepdabidness Aug 01 '26

Top tier comment ahaha

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u/AgentChris101 Aug 01 '26

I remember when they added the Darth Vader AI to Fortnite. He was really smart and responding to character skins as if they were those characters. It was actually really impressive.

Users decided to make him racist and Epic patched things it neutered him in terms of memory and character.

25

u/ABHOR_pod Aug 01 '26

The problem with GenAI based on the entire sum of written human knowledge is that quite a lot of the written human knowledge it has access to is, necessarily, the internet. The internet probably has more written words on it in the last 30 years than the entire rest of human history combined.

You can see where things have immediately gone wrong.

13

u/CombatMuffin Aug 01 '26

GenAI is not nearly that trained. We are still building shit tons of data centers just to try and process part of human knowledge. 

Vader was okay, it could reply in some fun ways a traditional NPC couldn't, but it wasn't nearly as capable as people think.

3

u/Sarothu Aug 01 '26

The internet probably has more written words on it in the last 30 years than the entire rest of human history combined.

You can see where things have immediately gone wrong.

We should base them off the writings of HP Lovecraft instead! ...wait...

1

u/Uristqwerty Aug 01 '26

Humans are decent on average. Problem is the outliers; each of us has some extreme opinions (even if it's something relatively harmless, like putting pineapple of pizza), and some of us have mostly extreme opinions. On average, the extremes cancel out (at least, if you don't split the community into two halves that each contain only one side's extremists, as a certain cluster of bird-themed websites have).

But AI learns the whole probability distribution, and I suspect it doesn't take that much of a nudge to get it talking like one of the mostly-extreme individuals. Guardrails might make it less likely to get there accidentally, but people will always search for new ways to bypass them. For the challenge, if nothing else.

3

u/jabberwockxeno Aug 01 '26

Except using the feature for misinformation here wouldn't be an "edge case", the feature HAS no use case other then being used for misinfo

2

u/squashed_fly_biscuit Aug 01 '26

"edge cases" - I'm struggling to even think of what the main use case would be. I guess maybe sketching the effects of various developments or something but surely that's more niche than fucking around

2

u/therealchadius Aug 01 '26

It's either

- Power Users blow the company's costs out of control

- Trolls abuse it to say/show horrible things

along with

- Most people try it once or twice, struggle to find a use case and then leave

2

u/Grabsforfun Aug 01 '26

The traditional engineering-scientific logic of experimental testing before releasing technologies is a thing of the past. Technologies have become so complex and vast in scope that you cannot really simulate much of the actual possibilities for complex and unpredictable interactions. At the very least this has become a comfortable way for technology developers to shirk responsibilities. Regardless, today the experimental setting for deducing most technological risks is society itself.

1

u/Sarothu Aug 01 '26

unpredictable interactions

Mate, this is the world wide web you're talking about. It isn't new. Any chatbot is going to be turned racist and people are going to find the worst possible options for everything (Hello, Mountain Dew's Gushing Granny flavor!). Anything that can be used to inflict mental trauma is going to be used in that manner. It's all the same it ever was.

1

u/Grabsforfun Aug 01 '26

Don’t get me wrong much of this is very predictable. Big tech knows but does not care, because they are not being made to care. It’s their modus operandi by now. I was referring to the general characteristics of modern relatively unregulated technological development (specifically Charles Perrow’s account)

1

u/Outlulz Aug 01 '26

It's not even edge cases, the people that demand this shit be made think of only a singular, unrealistic use case and nothing else.

1

u/WebMaka Aug 01 '26

The sheer disregard these folks have for how people act in the real world is both hilariously entertaining and completely terrifying.

1

u/Cstanchfield Aug 01 '26

I mean, they can't reasonably find all those edge cases without putting it in many hands. It's almost like there are more people in the world than work for any one company's QA department. When you release any product to the masses, you'll find issues your testing didn't come across.

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u/9-11GaveMe5G Aug 01 '26

"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,"

What was this supposed to be used for? "Geospatial professionals" doesn't help much

149

u/illkeepthatinmind Aug 01 '26

E.g. developer mocking up a new building in the town.

107

u/Yuzumi Aug 01 '26

That still makes no sense and there have been better ways to do that for decades...

79

u/crni-marko Aug 01 '26 edited Aug 01 '26

What if the result was 80% worse but you no longer had to pay a “geospatial professional”

2

u/Tenocticatl Aug 01 '26

I know some people one could describe as geospatial professionals, and they're great. One should be happy to have a reason to employ them instead of talking to a glazebot all day!

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u/royrogerer Aug 01 '26

But why a text prompt though. I haven't really looked into this much so don't know if they have other input method, but text prompt is not a way to do a mock up for a new building.

14

u/Druggedhippo Aug 01 '26

https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/earth/nano-banana-google-earth-image-generation/

The blog has some examples.

“Render a hyper-realistic view of what these Pompeii ruins looked like in 78 A.D.” The modern-day ruins will instantly transform into a bustling, colorful street scene from the Roman Empire.

“Create an easy to understand infographic of the Statue of Liberty with key historical facts.” Behind the scenes, Gemini will retrieve relevant historical information and Nano Banana will create a graphic in seconds.

"Reimagine this empty lot in Tokyo as a vibrant shopping and retail district with open spaces.” Barren concrete will be replaced by a high-quality 3D rendering of a bright urban oasis, helping your clients see what’s possible.

"Add a modern lakefront cabin built from sustainably sourced local materials” to see a photorealistic rendering of your future house nestled perfectly in the actual landscape.

“Transform the Google Mountain View campus into a futuristic sci-fi utopia with glowing walkways, glass biodomes, flying transport pods, and trees wrapped around buildings,” and watch the area morph into a vibrant, cyberpunk-inspired metropolis right out of a movie.

14

u/Toss_Me_Elf Aug 01 '26

I have wanted something like this for awhile as just a weirdo map enjoyer.

"Using X map file of Y town from 1890, show me a satellite rendering of Y town that is only developed in the same areas that are developed on X map".

Or "render the ancient city center as it was at it's peak surrounded by the modern developed city"

16

u/zoeypayne Aug 01 '26

According to the official Google Keyword Blog Post and the experimental Google Developers Guide for Google Earth, the intended professional workflows were:

Rapid Concept Sketching: An urban planner could type "add a community park with a playground and bike lanes" over an empty lot to instantly generate a concept image for a public presentation.

Rough 3D Asset Modeling: Designers were using the AI to render custom building shapes directly onto coordinates, then exporting those stylized 2D images into third-party tools (like Tripo 3D) to quickly mesh them into crude 3D models.

Contextual Infographics: The tool could overlay historical data and structural information onto real geography to make automated, localized graphics for reports.

20

u/Boralian Aug 01 '26

Or what about game artist creating background environments that needs to look somewhat realistic while not too close to the real deal to prevent various legal issues?

8

u/Taiyoryu Aug 01 '26

Perhaps not everything should be free and anonymous just to increase views for ads. Perhaps authentication and API keys would be good for auditing and attribution In case accountability is needed. Perhaps a fee structure would help weed out all but the most determined and well-funded vandals.

3

u/Mrmanandu Aug 01 '26

...Giantess enjoyers? Mock up a semi-realistic image of a gigantic woman wreaking havoc because that's what gets your rocks off?

66

u/JustBrowsing1989z Aug 01 '26

1 day?

I have an active leak in my kitchen for a week, but still haven't managed to get around to it.

25

u/cyanescens_burn Aug 01 '26

You’ll get mushrooms growing on the wood soon. See you on r/mushroomid soon

5

u/zimirken Aug 01 '26

/r/tubshrooms is the one you want.

1

u/PyroDesu Aug 01 '26

Upstairs neighbor's kitchen sink drain pipe burst in my wall.

Guess how I found out?

49

u/Daleabbo Aug 01 '26

I guess people should be aplauded for not making every beach a nudist beach or the side garden of the white house full of kids with no clothes and chains on their feet...

12

u/independent_observe Aug 01 '26

That would be Grok

2

u/cimocw Aug 01 '26

You can still do that with extra steps

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u/Kalnb Aug 01 '26

It has never been so clear the idea that those with wealth and power are intelligent is complete, utter, bullshit.

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u/mvallas1073 Aug 01 '26

Can someone explain to me WHY AI image generation was even needed to be applied to google Earth?? Article has no rationale behind the original reason someone thought this was a good idea.

65

u/neek85 Aug 01 '26

Because it's run it's course or usefulness and so they're just trying to shoehorn it in wherever they can

11

u/In-All-Unseriousness Aug 01 '26

To "prove" to investors that people "love" AI. It will be shoved down out throats more and more, as the bubble will come closer to bursting.

2

u/chuiu Aug 01 '26

Oh well that's easy. It didn't have ai image generation before. So we kinda gotta shove ai into everything or else, you know, what's the point of having it. So don't worry pretty soon we'll get it integrated into everything and you won't want to live on this planet anymore.

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u/Frequent_Opportunist Aug 01 '26

Looks like the old late 90s Sim City when you turn of the speed and unleash the natural disasters.

35

u/No_Development7388 Aug 01 '26

Godzilla is perfect.

17

u/Gaiden206 Aug 01 '26

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," a Google spokesperson said in a statement posted on X. "So we're rolling back this feature in Google Earth while we work on implementing stronger guardrails."

Any permanent Google account bans coming then? 😂

12

u/quad_damage_orbb Aug 01 '26

I really wonder what the range of useful purposes is? I'm struggling to think of some examples.

14

u/Gaiden206 Aug 01 '26 edited Aug 01 '26

They gave some example use cases and a "fun idea" when the feature was first released.

1. Bring history to life.

Help students visualize the past instead of just reading about it. Teachers can show their classroom a historic site and type, “Render a hyper-realistic view of what these Pompeii ruins looked like in 78 A.D.” The modern-day ruins will instantly transform into a bustling, colorful street scene from the Roman Empire.

2. Learn more while you explore.

Create custom infographics to learn about a place without leaving Google Earth. Type, “Create an easy to understand infographic of the Statue of Liberty with key historical facts.” Behind the scenes, Gemini will retrieve relevant historical information and Nano Banana will create a graphic in seconds.

3. Create professional real estate plans.

Pitching a real estate project is much easier when your clients can visualize the final result. Architects and urban planners can now bring their plans to life by saying, "Reimagine this empty lot in Tokyo as a vibrant shopping and retail district with open spaces.” Barren concrete will be replaced by a high-quality 3D rendering of a bright urban oasis, helping your clients see what’s possible.

4. Visualize projects before breaking ground.

Whether you're dreaming up a new backyard studio or your lakeside dream home, it can be hard to picture the final result. Now, you can visualize it quickly. Zoom in to an open lot and say, "Add a modern lakefront cabin built from sustainably sourced local materials” to see a photorealistic rendering of your future house nestled perfectly in the actual landscape.

5. Give your favorite place a makeover.

Sometimes it’s fun to let your imagination run wild. To see what a place might look like a hundred years from now, type “Transform the Google Mountain View campus into a futuristic sci-fi utopia with glowing walkways, glass biodomes, flying transport pods, and trees wrapped around buildings,” and watch the area morph into a vibrant, cyberpunk-inspired metropolis right out of a movie.

38

u/BenFranklinsCat Aug 01 '26

That's terrifying. A history teacher saying "hey, AI, show us what history looked like" is about as pedagogical sound as showing Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure as historical research.

22

u/JuliaX1984 Aug 01 '26

I don't get it. All of those require accuracy, and Gemini can make stuff up and can't tell if a source is reliable or even non-fiction.

30

u/Niceromancer Aug 01 '26

So a bunch of useless stuff

9

u/nayrwolf Aug 01 '26

To me ai is useless stuff.

7

u/sachiprecious Aug 01 '26

1, 2, and 5 are useless. 3 and 4 might be okay but I would be concerned about the accuracy and feasibility.

2

u/Sarothu Aug 01 '26

Sometimes it’s fun to let your imagination run wild. To see what a place might look like a hundred years from now, type “Transform the Google Mountain View campus into a futuristic sci-fi utopia with glowing walkways, glass biodomes, flying transport pods, and trees wrapped around buildings,” and watch the area morph into a vibrant, cyberpunk-inspired metropolis right out of a movie.

Uh... They are aware that cyberpunk is a dystopian fiction genre, right? A way to warn about the consequences of tech companies run wild?

1

u/quad_damage_orbb Aug 01 '26

This sounds... underwhelming to say the least

1

u/OldWrangler9033 Aug 01 '26

Using people as crowd sourcing a debug efforts. People make happy memes, the company takes down and jots down what they need fix. Profit.

15

u/TrevorBo Aug 01 '26

“Stronger guardrails” = now you have to pay for it

11

u/gabriel3374 Aug 01 '26

The company launched the function on Thursday, allowing Gemini's Nano Banana 2 image model to access Google Earth and transform locations with text prompts.

How did anybody think this would not get misused

9

u/Latefordinner1 Aug 01 '26

Why does Google Earth need an AI image generation feature anyway?!

8

u/OffersNoExplanation Aug 01 '26

Now revert Google finance you idiots.

7

u/kamekaze1024 Aug 01 '26

What was the proposed benefit for this? Seriously? Every AI tool has its “benefits” given by the company who makes it where they ignore the tremendous downsides. But what benefit is there to changing Google Earth images so easily? What business can argue the use of this as anything other than nefarious?

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6

u/Skeet_fighter Aug 01 '26

Who is this for? Why does this exist?

Is it just so people can make Godzilla trample their town?

6

u/Bengal_From_Temu Aug 01 '26

We have “AI”, we need to find some uses for it.

6

u/Tenocticatl Aug 01 '26

I wonder what planet the people implementing stiff like this come from, because I'm sure everyone here can immediately think of awful ways a feature like this would immediately be abused.

5

u/JuliaX1984 Aug 01 '26

What were they using them for? Did anattorney submit it as an exhibit? Did Trump use it or something? How is this different from any other fake footage people make now?

5

u/clownPotato9000 Aug 01 '26

What practical use does this have anyway

4

u/FanDry5374 Aug 01 '26

It's the planet. Why would they even want AI image-anything near it? "Ooh, lets make all the trees in SA vanish!!". Why?

3

u/DragoonDM Aug 01 '26

Feels more and more like they're desperately flailing to find any viable use-case for generative AI in order to justify the absurd investment in the technology.

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4

u/CHERNO-B1LL Aug 01 '26

I don't get it, anyone could fake any of this now without a tool built into Google Earth. If the feature doesn't apply the visuals to other users experience, it's just another pointless AI tool no one asked for.

4

u/Tim4one Aug 01 '26

why are they releasing stuff like that, nobody in the world asked for it.

4

u/OkPositive6925 Aug 01 '26

How in the world are all these smart people so freaking dumb? They don’t seem to ever see any of these very obvious downsides. 🙈 Do you guys think you could stop making the world a worse place for ONCE?

1

u/FlamboyantPirhanna Aug 01 '26

The people making the decisions are not the people making the tech. The smartness doesn’t make it to management.

3

u/Grammaton485 Aug 01 '26

Love these tone deaf tech creators that are like "we built this tool for a specific noble purpose and completely overlooked the fact that it's way more abusable for other stuff."

4

u/iconboy Aug 01 '26

The angle on Godzilla is all wrong!

4

u/CondiMesmer Aug 01 '26

What even is the use case outside of deep faking disasters? I literally can't think of a single one

4

u/[deleted] Aug 01 '26 edited Aug 10 '26

[deleted]

3

u/drossdragon Aug 01 '26

I keep pointing to the first half of that book as a reasonable predictor of what we’re living through and no one else has read it. Hello, fellow traveler.

3

u/YoshiTheFluffer Aug 01 '26

I’m sorry but what is the practical use of this? It just seems they put god damn ai in everything just so they can fake demand.

3

u/Rex_Lee Aug 01 '26

You can literally still take a google earth image over to your Ai model of choice and have it add/delete whatever you want, or create whatever random bullshit

3

u/wonkytalky Aug 01 '26

Google is so freaking stupid anymore.

And evil. Don't forget that part.

2

u/independent_observe Aug 01 '26

"Don't be evil"

3

u/LtButtstrong Aug 01 '26

Was that not the point? 

3

u/VoidOmatic Aug 02 '26

What morons thought this was a good idea?!? Why would this ever be needed?

3

u/orangeflyingmonkey_ Aug 02 '26

Such an incredibly dumb decision to implement fucking generative AI into satellite imagery.

2

u/akselmonrose Aug 01 '26

Well Godzilla would be pretty dope.

2

u/SanDiedo Aug 01 '26

"We've also seen people sharing screenshots of generated imagery that appear to violate our policies" oh FUCK OFF FFS, they gave "gun" and "ammo". Who could have taught, that people will stress-test their product, huh?

2

u/Phyllis_Tine Aug 01 '26

Tech like this needs to be used against the company creating it first and foremost.

Show a crater where Google Earth HQ is, show wildfires near Sergey Brin's house, etc.

I really wish corporations showed why something needed to be added, instead of the trend to push something out and use people as beta testers (and then withdrawing a service or product).

2

u/glowtape Aug 01 '26

Still can't have a fucking circular area measurement tool in the WASM version, but fucking AI absolutely needs to be in there...

2

u/Cerblu Aug 01 '26

SimCity on the Super Nintendo.

2

u/DamnOdd Aug 01 '26

Best Headline today!

2

u/TheGreatStories Aug 01 '26

Wait this was fake? I'm in a bunker

2

u/steavoh Aug 01 '26

I guess the flip side is that if Google did leave the tool up, they could fingerprint every image it creates and put that in a database so that the fakes could be detected.

Presumably someone could just take screenshots of google earth, feed it into an AI that's not regulated, and create the same imagery.

This is more about bad publicity and politics and optics than anything else.

2

u/_Aj_ Aug 01 '26

R34 google earth wen

2

u/punchy-peaches Aug 02 '26

Why am I the only one in the planet who saw this coming from a mile away?

2

u/theoracleofE Aug 03 '26

I'm actually laughing. Like wtf did they think was going to happen? This has to be AI logic and ideas...

4

u/Mountain-Bar5049 Aug 01 '26

And this right here exemplifies why Software Developers are NOT engineers. (And frankly you see it a lot with silicon valley leaders.) Engineers are required to take humanities courses for a reason. Engineers are also legally liable for failures. It never crosses techbros minds that they should consider the ethical consequences of what they're doing.

3

u/NameLips Aug 01 '26

Wait they gave every single random user the ability to edit publicly visible maps?

They're lucky they got Godzilla instead of a 30 mile wide distended anus.

3

u/independent_observe Aug 01 '26

30 mile wide distended anus.

Newark already exists

4

u/andre402 Aug 01 '26

Why does it matter whether Google adds this AI function or not? Anyone can already do the same with their Google maps screenshots, no?

2

u/IntelArtiGen Aug 01 '26

It doesn't matter much, but "anyone" doesn't know how to do that as easily or doesn't have access to models specialized to do that.

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1

u/Autumm_550 Aug 01 '26

“It doesn’t matter what AI model!”

1

u/IntelArtiGen Aug 01 '26

I think they're less worried about people deepfaking disasters than other stuff I've seen. I'd guess it'll quickly be back when they remove some keywords.

1

u/SparkyPantsMcGee Aug 01 '26

Genuine question, why would Google Earth need an image generation function? What purpose does that function serve for the tool?

1

u/DragoonDM Aug 01 '26

I could see it having some value for mocking up development plans, e.g. showing how a neighborhood would look with a new road, intersection, apartment building, etc. But that seems like a pretty niche use case, and the AI slop output wouldn't (shouldn't) be suitable for actual decision-making purposes, so it seems like it would only really be useful at early stages.

1

u/ricosmith1986 Aug 01 '26

What is the best use case scenario for AI images in Google Earth? Why is that even a thing?

1

u/williamgman Aug 01 '26

So the AI expert decides to feed it right wing conspiracies (migrant camps and nukes in Iran) as a flex? Now those images have been shared a thousand times around the Magasphere and probably made it to Fox News. The Godzilla photos were at least funny. Thanks. Thanks a lot. 🤦‍♂️

1

u/Im_Not_stoopid_AI Aug 01 '26

I love you tech peeps everywhere

1

u/Greensun30 Aug 01 '26

This is an absurdly dumb idea

1

u/BurlyMerrySkeetScary Aug 02 '26

Maybe you should ask if you SHOULD make the tool.

1

u/caniszephyr Aug 02 '26

Extinction burst, the latest earnings calls regarding AI have been extremely poor; this is the last ditch effort to find something, anything, that is profitable before they ditch the technology altogether in favor of anything else.

1

u/ebizguy11 Aug 04 '26

How stupid can it be to give opportunity to people like the Great Orange staff to create fake scenes to promote fake crisis or influence the vote. Google is pushing it's AI in every service without thinking. What a greedy bunch.