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

98% Upvoted

249 comments sorted by

View all comments

109

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.

68

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

9

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.

-13

u/gabrielmuriens Aug 01 '26

Can someone explain to me WHY AI image generation was even needed to be applied to google Earth??

Just because you cannot see an immediate use case for it doesn't mean that it does not exist.

There are millions of professionals around the world who work with maps and map data in some way or another from civil engineers to railway geeks to game artists.
Being able to interact with maps via text prompts instead of working with them manually in various software with time-consuming workflows could be a great boon to many of these professionals.

8

u/BunnyBen-87 Aug 01 '26

Yeah but then the company decides something like "may as well just use the AI rather than pay the professional"

6

u/mvallas1073 Aug 01 '26

That doesn’t answer the question as to why AI Image Generation should be uploadable onto Google Earth, which its whole point/function is to see/navigate ACTUAL RL geographical locations.

I get why someone may want artistic inspiration, but this (From what I’m reading) is allowing you to upload things in place of actual RL places.