Earlier today, I used Google Earth to conjure images of terrible things: office buildings on fire, mass destruction in San Francisco, a smoldering crater in place of the Eiffel Tower. I was able to because Google had just decided to integrate its AI image generator, Nano Banana, into the service, which has historically been used by people seeking satellite or aerial imagery of real-world locations.
Just open the site, “pick a spot on the map, and start bringing your ideas to life,” Google wrote in a press release announcing the update some 24 hours ago. So I did.
I was easily able to generate those violent images simply by searching for a location on Google Earth, clicking the “Create image” icon, and typing in a few words. The feature also readily doctored stills of less spectacular, and likely less immediately falsifiable, events: a homeless encampment on the White House lawn, protesters outside the Mar-a-Lago resort, immigrants streaming over the U.S.-Mexico border.
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Before it allowed people to create fake imagery, Google Earth was a unique resource for researchers, journalists, and intelligence officials, particularly those studying armed conflict and natural disasters. Satellite and aerial imagery can be used to monitor crop failure or deforestation, the creation of mass graves, and the results of bombing campaigns. Especially in conflict zones and other areas that are hard for people to reach, satellite imagery is a go-to method for establishing some sort of ground truth. After Google Earth rolled out the AI feature, though, one investigative reporter wrote on LinkedIn that the tool could be used to easily and rapidly create images of drone strikes that look “very close to what we’ve seen in Ukraine, Russia, the Middle East, and other war-torn conflict zones.” And instead of requiring malicious actors to find a screenshot and then get around some AI model’s safeguards, Google rolled everything needed for a misinformation farm into one smooth user interface. It took me all of four seconds to generate a rendering of a Trump Hotel on the Gaza Strip.
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Google is, of course, not alone in releasing AI features that have had embarrassing, dangerous, and avoidable consequences. See, for instance, Elon Musk’s Grok generating more than 1 million sexualized images, including of children, over just a few days, or any number of embarrassing errors made by ChatGPT releases throughout the years. Again and again, the AI industry undercuts its rhetoric about safety by launching products with little or no due diligence. If, as every major AI executive has pronounced, this technology really could upend human civilization, their companies should perhaps start taking that responsibility seriously.
Feel like the article is kinda hyperbolic? The thesis behind "ruining Google Earth" is that because of the nanobanana integration, images or screenshots of Google Earth that researchers post on...
Feel like the article is kinda hyperbolic? The thesis behind "ruining Google Earth" is that because of the nanobanana integration, images or screenshots of Google Earth that researchers post on the internet will have increased scrutiny or some amount of disbelief.
But, like, even before they added a direct integration all you had to do was take a screenshot and put it in nanobanana. It's the same thing. I find it hard to believe it's particularly any more or less ruined because it takes half a second less time.
I can see a more legitimate complaint that it's kind of a waste of UI space. Not as impactful as "Google Earth is RUINED", I suppose.
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Feel like the article is kinda hyperbolic? The thesis behind "ruining Google Earth" is that because of the nanobanana integration, images or screenshots of Google Earth that researchers post on the internet will have increased scrutiny or some amount of disbelief.
But, like, even before they added a direct integration all you had to do was take a screenshot and put it in nanobanana. It's the same thing. I find it hard to believe it's particularly any more or less ruined because it takes half a second less time.
I can see a more legitimate complaint that it's kind of a waste of UI space. Not as impactful as "Google Earth is RUINED", I suppose.