Google has temporarily withdrawn a newly launched AI image-generation feature in Google Earth less than 24 hours after its debut.
The feature used Google’s Nano Banana 2 AI model to let users generate photorealistic images from text prompts based on Google Earth’s satellite, aerial, and 3D imagery.
While intended for applications such as education, urban planning, and design visualization, users quickly demonstrated its potential to fabricate realistic scenes, including wars, bomb craters, floods, and refugee camps.
Google said it had seen professionals using the tool productively but had also observed generated images that appeared to violate its policies.
It added that Google watermarked the AI-generated images and never displayed them in the public Google Earth experience.
The issue was that the screenshots of the fabricated images could still spread online and fuel misinformation, so Google had no choice but to take the tool offline. It is building new safeguards so usage remains strictly legal when launched again.
