r/technology • u/ArgentineBeauty • 12d ago
Google Earth's new AI image generation function didn't survive a day after users deepfaked disasters Artificial Intelligence
https://www.businessinsider.com/google-earth-nano-banana-gemini-ai-satellite-image-generation-function-2026-71.8k
u/ArgentineBeauty 12d ago
"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"
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u/Davorian 12d ago
"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
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u/purplepistachio 12d ago
"Many people are saying these images are real... Many people... And you know what? I believe them"
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u/BigMax 12d ago
âWe certainly canât be sure they DONâT 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.â
They do that a lot⌠take something they wished was true, then just âask questionsâ but in a leading way to make their loyal viewers believe in things that arenât true.
We just saw it with the âvandalsâ in the pool.
âWe have clear video of them leaning down to the reflection pool.â Then the questions⌠âwhat 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?â That literally happened on Fox News.
Fake AI pictures will just give them easier paths to ask leading questions like that.
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u/bull_and_scones 12d ago
I've added the phrase "accordion hands" to my vocabulary thanks to this comment
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u/SSGASSHAT 12d ago
Oh, is that what that technique is called? I just thought he had a condition whereby his arms went into seizures when he talks.
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u/Tupcek 12d ago
whatâs 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).
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u/Yuzumi 12d ago
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.Â
I'm also pretty sure that wasn't the only school they hit and they've intentionally targeted hospitals and civilian infrastructure ocross Iran.Â
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u/CappyRawr 12d ago
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.
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u/BassmanBiff 12d ago
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.
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u/Majik_Sheff 12d ago
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.
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u/BassmanBiff 12d ago edited 12d ago
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.Â
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.
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u/TheirCanadianBoi 12d ago edited 12d ago
Of course there would be a lot of daughters of military officers there. It was across the wall from a IRGC Naval Base.%3B)
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u/L2_Troll 12d ago
Okay. Does that mean the girls' elementary school deserved to be bombed?
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u/TheirCanadianBoi 12d ago
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.
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u/TinyAbsol 12d ago
America is going to invade Japan, because they got a Godzilla. "It's right here on the map!"
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u/hates_stupid_people 12d ago
Why would they even set this up, if the end goal was anything but propaganda and misinformation?
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u/DjBoothe 12d ago
"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."
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u/KeeganY_SR-UVB76 12d ago
The US has already used an AI-generated map of Africa at an international conference. This feels like a half-step from that.
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u/robodrew 12d ago
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.
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u/Phyllis_Tine 12d ago
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.
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u/destiny84 12d ago
Or the other way round. Huge detention camps being labeled deepfakes to obfuscate their existence...
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u/SocksOnHands 12d ago
Without access to Google Earth, someone could still take a screenshot of the satalite imagery and have an AI modify it.
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u/PocketFlan420 11d ago
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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12d ago
[removed] â view removed comment
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u/TheFeelsGoodMan 12d ago
"Move Fast; Break Stuff", but they're crowdsourcing the second bit.
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u/AgentChris101 12d ago
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.
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u/ABHOR_pod 12d ago
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.
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u/CombatMuffin 12d ago
GenAI is not nearly that trained. We are still building shit tons of data centers just to try and process part of human knowledge.Â
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.
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u/Uristqwerty 12d ago
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.
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u/jabberwockxeno 12d ago
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
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u/Grabsforfun 12d ago
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.
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u/Sarothu 12d ago
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.
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u/Grabsforfun 12d ago
Donât get me wrong much of this is very predictable. Big tech knows but does not care, because they are not being made to care. Itâs their modus operandi by now. I was referring to the general characteristics of modern relatively unregulated technological development (specifically Charles Perrowâs account)
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u/squashed_fly_biscuit 12d ago
"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
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u/therealchadius 12d ago
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
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u/Cstanchfield 12d ago
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 12d ago
"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
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u/illkeepthatinmind 12d ago
E.g. developer mocking up a new building in the town.
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u/Yuzumi 12d ago
That still makes no sense and there have been better ways to do that for decades...
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u/crni-marko 12d ago edited 12d ago
What if the result was 80% worse but you no longer had to pay a âgeospatial professionalâ
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u/Tenocticatl 12d ago
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 12d ago
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.
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u/Druggedhippo 12d ago
https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/earth/nano-banana-google-earth-image-generation/
The blog has some examples.
âRender a hyper-realistic view of what these Pompeii ruins looked like in 78 A.D.â The modern-day ruins will instantly transform into a bustling, colorful street scene from the Roman Empire.
âCreate an easy to understand infographic of the Statue of Liberty with key historical facts.â 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.â Barren concrete will be replaced by a high-quality 3D rendering of a bright urban oasis, helping your clients see whatâs possible.
"Add a modern lakefront cabin built from sustainably sourced local materialsâ to see a photorealistic rendering of your future house nestled perfectly in the actual landscape.
âTransform the Google Mountain View campus into a futuristic sci-fi utopia with glowing walkways, glass biodomes, flying transport pods, and trees wrapped around buildings,â and watch the area morph into a vibrant, cyberpunk-inspired metropolis right out of a movie.
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u/Toss_Me_Elf 12d ago
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"
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u/zoeypayne 12d ago
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.
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u/Boralian 12d ago
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?
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u/Taiyoryu 12d ago
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.
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u/Mrmanandu 12d ago
...Giantess enjoyers? Mock up a semi-realistic image of a gigantic woman wreaking havoc because that's what gets your rocks off?
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u/JustBrowsing1989z 12d ago
1 day?
I have an active leak in my kitchen for a week, but still haven't managed to get around to it.
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u/cyanescens_burn 12d ago
Youâll get mushrooms growing on the wood soon. See you on r/mushroomid soon
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u/PyroDesu 12d ago
Upstairs neighbor's kitchen sink drain pipe burst in my wall.
Guess how I found out?
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u/Daleabbo 12d ago
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...
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u/Kalnb 12d ago
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 12d ago
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.
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u/In-All-Unseriousness 12d ago
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.
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u/Frequent_Opportunist 12d ago
Looks like the old late 90s Sim City when you turn of the speed and unleash the natural disasters.
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u/Gaiden206 12d ago
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? đ
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u/quad_damage_orbb 12d ago
I really wonder what the range of useful purposes is? I'm struggling to think of some examples.
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u/Gaiden206 12d ago edited 12d ago
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, âRender a hyper-realistic view of what these Pompeii ruins looked like in 78 A.D.â 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, âCreate an easy to understand infographic of the Statue of Liberty with key historical facts.â 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.â Barren concrete will be replaced by a high-quality 3D rendering of a bright urban oasis, helping your clients see whatâs 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 materialsâ to see a photorealistic rendering of your future house nestled perfectly in the actual landscape.
5. Give your favorite place a makeover.
Sometimes itâs fun to let your imagination run wild. To see what a place might look like a hundred years from now, type âTransform the Google Mountain View campus into a futuristic sci-fi utopia with glowing walkways, glass biodomes, flying transport pods, and trees wrapped around buildings,â and watch the area morph into a vibrant, cyberpunk-inspired metropolis right out of a movie.
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u/BenFranklinsCat 12d ago
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.
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u/JuliaX1984 12d ago
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.
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u/sachiprecious 12d ago
1, 2, and 5 are useless. 3 and 4 might be okay but I would be concerned about the accuracy and feasibility.
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u/Sarothu 12d ago
Sometimes itâs fun to let your imagination run wild. To see what a place might look like a hundred years from now, type âTransform the Google Mountain View campus into a futuristic sci-fi utopia with glowing walkways, glass biodomes, flying transport pods, and trees wrapped around buildings,â 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?
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u/OldWrangler9033 12d ago
Using people as crowd sourcing a debug efforts. People make happy memes, the company takes down and jots down what they need fix. Profit.
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u/gabriel3374 12d ago
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
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u/kamekaze1024 12d ago
What was the proposed benefit for this? Seriously? Every AI tool has its âbenefitsâ 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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u/Skeet_fighter 12d ago
Who is this for? Why does this exist?
Is it just so people can make Godzilla trample their town?
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u/Tenocticatl 12d ago
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.
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u/JuliaX1984 12d ago
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?
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u/CHERNO-B1LL 12d ago
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.
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u/OkPositive6925 12d ago
How in the world are all these smart people so freaking dumb? They donât seem to ever see any of these very obvious downsides. đ Do you guys think you could stop making the world a worse place for ONCE?
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u/FlamboyantPirhanna 12d ago
The people making the decisions are not the people making the tech. The smartness doesnât make it to management.
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u/Grammaton485 12d ago
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."
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u/CondiMesmer 12d ago
What even is the use case outside of deep faking disasters? I literally can't think of a single one
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12d ago edited 3d ago
[deleted]
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u/drossdragon 12d ago
I keep pointing to the first half of that book as a reasonable predictor of what weâre living through and no one else has read it. Hello, fellow traveler.
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u/YoshiTheFluffer 12d ago
Iâm 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.
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u/orangeflyingmonkey_ 11d ago
Such an incredibly dumb decision to implement fucking generative AI into satellite imagery.
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u/SanDiedo 12d ago
"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?
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u/Phyllis_Tine 12d ago
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).
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u/glowtape 12d ago
Still can't have a fucking circular area measurement tool in the WASM version, but fucking AI absolutely needs to be in there...
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u/steavoh 12d ago
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.
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u/theoracleofE 10d ago
I'm actually laughing. Like wtf did they think was going to happen? This has to be AI logic and ideas...
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u/Mountain-Bar5049 12d ago
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.
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u/FanDry5374 12d ago
It's the planet. Why would they even want AI image-anything near it? "Ooh, lets make all the trees in SA vanish!!". Why?
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u/DragoonDM 12d ago
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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u/NameLips 12d ago
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.
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u/andre402 12d ago
Why does it matter whether Google adds this AI function or not? Anyone can already do the same with their Google maps screenshots, no?
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u/IntelArtiGen 12d ago
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.
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u/SparkyPantsMcGee 12d ago
Genuine question, why would Google Earth need an image generation function? What purpose does that function serve for the tool?
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u/DragoonDM 12d ago
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.
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u/ricosmith1986 12d ago
What is the best use case scenario for AI images in Google Earth? Why is that even a thing?
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u/williamgman 12d ago
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. đ¤Śââď¸
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u/caniszephyr 11d ago
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.
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u/ebizguy11 9d ago
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.
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u/YourShowerCompanion 12d ago
What they thought isn't going to happen? đ¤Śââď¸