WASHINGTON: Google has introduced an innovative feature where users of Google Earth can use AI technology for generating visualizations right on top of satellite images on the service, while the Google Earth AI technology has already raised some concerns among scholars and OSINT specialists because of its disinformation potential.
The launch of the “create image” function which uses the Nano Banana 2 image generation technology from Google to zoom into locations and instantly generate images using Google Earth’s satellite, aerial, and 3D mapping data. The Google Earth AI tool was touted by Google as an avenue that would allow one to “visualize history, create real estate plans and more.”
While Google claims otherwise, disinformation experts have highlighted serious apprehensions that the Google Earth AI tool could be used by malicious individuals to misappropriate one of the most credible sources on the internet for fact-checking and verification. The digital forensics expert Henk Van Ess minced no words about his fears. "Google has spent 20 years building the reference that the world checks against," he commented on Substack. "Today it has added a button that makes things up."
In addition, the credibility of the platform, itself, could render the fabricated content more credible in the eyes of many people. "The forgery does not need to look believable on its own," he continued. "It inherits the credibility of the map it was made on."
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Brady Africk, a research analyst at the American Enterprise Institute who works in satellite imagery analysis, shared the same concerns regarding the Google Earth AI application. According to him, the updated program "makes it easier to create convincing images of satellite that can be rapidly spread on the Internet and deceive people." Africk also pointed out that these AI-created images that have become common can result in the loss of trust in the credibility of satellite imagery, thus making it difficult for journalists and scientists to use these images in their work.
To respond to the criticism, Google went ahead to respond directly to these issues on X, clarifying that the images made through the Google Earth AI application have SynthID digital watermarks, which are invisible codes contained in the media produced through the use of the artificial intelligence application of the company. According to Google, an individual can query the Gemini chatbot of Google whether there is a SynthID watermark in a particular image.
The incorporation of Google Earth’s AI application demonstrates the wider issue that is present within larger technology companies regarding their use of AI to create images that were previously thought to be from a reliable source for obtaining true information. Even though watermarking techniques exist to detect such fakes, as demonstrated by SynthID, experts believe that the creation of realistic fake satellite images may be able to circumvent these detection tools faster than people become aware of them.