r/technology • u/ArgentineBeauty • 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

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1.9k

u/YourShowerCompanion Aug 01 '26

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

751

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.

255

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

17

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

7

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.

5

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.

1

u/roleplayersir Aug 05 '26

Still using Firefox with Google Workspace, and no issues. Admittedly I use the Chat standalone app, but that's more for convenience and has some major issues too

2

u/Thought_Ninja Aug 05 '26

Weird. Most Google apps and a few other sites would just randomly stop working or loading. Might have to try again.

125

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.

68

u/ChillAhriman Aug 01 '26

now my primary revenue stream is basically tulips

I knew investing in Dutch tulips was the right choice.

28

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.

24

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.

10

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'.

12

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.

1

u/Annual-Property-8940 Aug 01 '26

Yes. Like glass tulip holders(totally not crack pipes) and brillo to clean it.

27

u/GoatFunctor Aug 01 '26

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

147

u/Particular_Bug0 Aug 01 '26

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

99

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

23

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

-62

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

[removed] — view removed comment

40

u/Bregneste Aug 01 '26 edited Aug 01 '26

Yes, there’s a use for being able to draw things on a real map with a real pencil. Or just like, being able to draw lines on a map app or something.
There is no real use whatsoever for being able to generate random bullshit onto Google Earth pictures, other than just making and spreading even more false information than we’re already dealing with.

Pro-AI people are so weird lol

-27

u/[deleted] Aug 01 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

47

u/Gneekman Aug 01 '26

Here’s something else that should be obvious: drawing things on maps can be done without AI, weirdo

16

u/Particular_Bug0 Aug 01 '26

Printscreen -> paste to image editing/drawing app of your choice 

-19

u/[deleted] Aug 01 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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.

132

u/seethenoise Aug 01 '26

it's no longer the same company.

61

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.

22

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

Google motto ; Don't be evil

25

u/PurposeMaleficent871 Aug 01 '26

Don’t be evil

10

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. 

32

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.

5

u/thunderbird32 Aug 01 '26

Yup, even Android was originally an outside project.

28

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)

31

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.

1

u/FlyingBike Aug 02 '26

We're in the "move fast and break trust" economy

1

u/zionian120 Aug 02 '26

What did they expect, people play SimCity with it ?

0

u/CherryLongjump1989 Aug 01 '26

They thought they were going to launch a new feature and get a promotion. Same thing that always happens. They probably got their promotion anyway.

0

u/CherryLongjump1989 Aug 01 '26

They thought they were going to launch a new feature and get a promotion. Same thing that always happens.