Overview
- Google added Nano Banana 2–powered image generation to Google Earth on July 30 and removed the feature about a day later after misuse surfaced, the company said.
- The tool let users write text prompts to create photorealistic images over Google Earth’s satellite, aerial and 3D basemaps for uses such as historical views or planning.
- Journalists and open‑source researchers quickly produced convincing fakes—examples included a collapsed Eiffel Tower, a sinkhole at the Great Pyramid, and tanks in Kyiv—that showed the tool accepted harmful prompts.
- Google said generated images were watermarked with SynthID and not shown in the main Earth experience, but researchers demonstrated that prompt tweaks and screenshots can erase or bypass those protections and that detection is unreliable.
- The rollback leaves no timeline for return and highlights a wider risk to verification: trusted mapping tools could be used to seed disinformation and harm people who depend on geospatial evidence.