Google has launched a new Google Earth feature that lets users generate artificial intelligence visualisations over the platform of satellite imagery, prompting warnings from researchers and open-source intelligence experts about its potential to fuel disinformation.
The “create image” tool, released on Thursday, uses Google of Nano Banana 2 image-generation technology, allowing users to zoom into any location and produce images within seconds using Google Earth of satellite, aerial and 3D-mapping data.
Google introduced the feature as a way to help users visualise historical scenes, plan real estate projects and explore other creative applications.
However, disinformation researchers have cautioned that the tool could be exploited to misuse Google Earth, long regarded as a trusted resource for fact-checking and verification, to produce realistic fake geospatial imagery.
Digital investigations expert Henk Van Ess said Google had spent two decades building a reference point that the world relies on for verification, and had now introduced a feature capable of fabricating content.
Henk Van Ess added that such forgeries do not need to appear convincing on their own, since they inherit credibility from the map on which they are created.
Brady Africk, a research analyst at the American Enterprise Institute who specialises in satellite imagery analysis, said the update makes it easier to produce convincing fake satellite images that can spread rapidly online and mislead the public.
He noted that the growing prevalence of such AI-generated fakes could erode public trust in satellite imagery and complicate the work of journalists and researchers.
Responding on X, Google said images created using the new feature include SynthID digital watermarks, invisible markers embedded in content generated by its artificial intelligence tools. The company said users can verify the presence of a SynthID watermark by asking its Gemini chatbot.
