Google Removes AI Image Generator From Google Earth After Fake Satellite Images Spark Concerns

Google Quickly Rolls Back a Feature That Could Make Deepfake Satellite Images - CNET

Dashia is the consumer insights editor for CNET.... Read full bio Google announced a new way to use AI this week. Then pulled it a day later. As of Thursday, you could use the company's Nano Banana 2 AI model to generate images on Google Earth's satellite, aerial and 3D images. After journalists and researchers shared concerns that it could create realistic satellite images that could be used in misinformation campaigns, the company said it was heading back to the drawing board to improve guardrails. Google initially listed a few ways you can use the new Nano Banana feature in your Google Earth maps, like creating custom infographics to learn about a new place you haven't visited yet, or reimagine how it looked years ago. You could even imagine the future, like new infrastructure or your dream home. I tried it out for myself before the feature disappeared. I typed Central Park in the Google Earth search bar, zoomed into the place and tapped the Create Image button. After a brief prompt, I saw my three-story dream home in the middle of Central Park -- which is far from realistic. However, you could refine the image and even save it to a project. This feature was only available for desktop use. And it took a few minutes for the image of a house in Central Park to generate. Google initially said the new feature "creates concepts grounded in the real world" in Thursday's blog post. Researchers quickly highlighted the potentially hazardous possibilities the tool created. In a viral post on his newsletter, Digital Digging, investigator Henk van Ess showed how easily the tool could create fake but believable images -- a nuclear plant in Iran, for example. "Google spent twenty years building the reference the world checks against," van Ess wrote. "Today it added a button that makes things up." After the backlash, Google on Friday said in a statement on X that it would remove the feature after seeing screenshots of images that violated its policies. "So we're rolling back this feature in Google Earth while we work on implementing stronger guardrails," the company said. "It's important to note that generated images didn't appear in the main Google Earth experience for others to see and were watermarked as AI generated." There are plenty of AI image-generation tools, such as Canva and Midjourney. Some focus on realism and let you edit existing images, like Nano Banana. You can create your own imaginary world, like a Barbie Dreamhouse, in place of your own home on your map. But there are plenty of dangers, too. That false sense of reality can lead to misinformation, deception and skewed opinions and narratives. I found some relief in knowing you couldn't alter Google Earth for everyone, because you could only alter your own map. But that won't stop users from sharing screenshots or saved map projects with other users that depict an alternate reality. And when trusted tech companies, like Google, create AI features like this, it makes it even harder to sort out what is true and false.

Google Earth's AI deepfake tool only lasted one day

Google has shut down Google Earth feature it launched Thursday that allowed users to edit satellite images with text prompts using AI. The tool essentially let users create AI deepfakes of the real world using text prompts; Digital Digging's Henk van Ess, for example, intentionally generated images adding things like refugees near the Mexican border and a bomb crater by a hospital in Gaza. On Thursday, Google's initial response to van Ess noted that images generated with Nano Banana 2 in Google Earth included a digital watermark and that the company prevented "image creation on harmful topics." One day later, Google's new statement says that "We know that people uniquely trust Google Earth for a reliable view of the world. 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. So we're rolling back this feature in Google Earth while we work on implementing stronger guardrails. It's important to note that generated images didn't appear in the main Google Earth experience for others to see and were watermarked as AI generated." van Ess pointed out that he was able to fool Hive's AI detection tool with a video generated in Google Earth, showing how the generated media could spread despite the watermarks, and said in his testing, "Nothing was refused, nothing was softened, and nothing suggested I try a different prompt."

Google Earth AI tool raises fears over spread of fake satellite images

Security researchers have attacked Google's new AI-powered image editing tool, arguing it will accelerate the spread of disinformation by making it easier to fabricate convincing satellite imagery. The company on Thursday announced that it had integrated its Nano Banana image-generation model into Google Earth, allowing users to "type whatever you want to see" and "virtually reimagine anywhere in the world". The system lets users manipulate satellite imagery with AI-generated objects and scenes. Users on X quickly demonstrated the feature by sharing images they said showed a fabricated bomb crater in Gaza, nuclear power plants in Iran and a car crash on a street in Amsterdam. Open-source intelligence (Osint) experts who use Google Earth to verify information from hard-to-access areas, including war zones, warned that the tool could undermine one of the most widely used reference points for authenticating imagery. "Google Earth has served for decades as the dated reference layer journalists and investigators check suspicious imagery against; building a generative tool into that same benchmark corrupts the very measure used to debunk fakes," said Sam Stockwell, senior research associate at the Alan Turing Institute. "The fake is now being made inside the thing people use to check whether pictures are real," said Henk van Ess, an Osint expert and author of the Digital Digging newsletter, who shared the altered Google Earth images on X. Google's announcement comes as concerns grow over the spread of AI-generated images on social media, making it far easier for individuals and governments to fabricate evidence and distribute it to millions of people worldwide. In March, as war raged across the Middle East, AI-altered satellite images circulated on X purporting to show damage to an American radar system in Qatar following an Iranian drone strike. Another apparently AI-generated post claimed to show the Islamic republic's late supreme leader being pulled out of rubble, while a further AI-enhanced post exaggerated the scale of damage to a US military base in Iraq. Brady Africk, a research analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, said Google's tool went further than previous image generators because it is integrated into Google Earth. "These fakes are anchored to real satellite images, removing some of the tell-tale signs of AI generation like mismatched terrain and scale," he said. Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment but has previously said every image created with the Nano Banana tool in Google Earth includes a watermark that can be identified by its Gemini AI model. However Africk cautioned this would not be sufficient to prevent people from being deceived. "Few people check whether an image is AI-generated as they scroll past or share it."

Here's the problem with putting an AI image generator in Google Earth

Now a text prompt is all it takes to generate reality-warping images using Google Earth's satellite, aerial, and 3D imagery, like these images generated by Digital Digging's Henk van Ess that show "refugees near the Mexican border" and a bomb crater near a hospital in Gaza. Google responded to Digital Digging's AI-altered images, saying, "We take misinformation seriously - every image created with Nano Banana in Google Earth includes the SynthID digital watermark, so if someone is unsure about an image, they can ask the Gemini app or use Lens in Search to see if the image was AI-generated." In addition to using Google's "@verifyai" tag in Gemini to check suspicious images, van Ess suggests comparing them to other satellite platforms, like Sentinel-2 or Landsat, and even verifying orbital data like when it says it was taken and by which satellite. The feature launched globally on the web version of Google Earth earlier this week, and Google's blog post pitches it as a tool for visualizing historical sites and real estate projects. Some images are easy to spot as fakes, like showing the Sphinx crossed with the Statue of Liberty, but I can see how the Nano Banana 2 feature could create images that are believable enough to spread misinformation. And while Google's watermark may be difficult to remove, it's not impossible to miss or bypass - Digital Digging was able to fool Hive's AI detector with an AI-altered video from Google Earth.

Google rolls back the needless AI generation tools it added to Google Earth - Engadget

The decision comes one day after people used the tool to generate misleading satellite imagery. Google is rolling back Nano Banana image generation inside of Google Earth less a day after announcing the integration on July 30. "We know that people uniquely trust Google Earth for a reliable view of the world. 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," the company wrote in a statement it shared on X. The announcement comes after 404 Media showed Google Earth's image generation could easily be used to create misleading satellite imagery. In one example, author Joseph Cox used the tool to make an image of a blast crater in Los Angeles. In another, he added protestors just outside of Google's Mountain View, California campus. At the time, the company downplayed the misinformation concerns, arguing people could use tools like Gemini to verify the authenticity of any images generated by Nano Banana. "We take misinformation seriously -- every image created with Nano Banana in Google Earth includes the SynthID digital watermark, so if someone is unsure about an image, they can ask the Gemini app or use Lens in Search to see if the image was AI-generated. In addition, we prevent image creation on harmful topics and are continually updating our protections," the company said in a statement. is it good that you can just put anything you want into Google Earth with AI now: www.404media.co/google-earth... -- Jason Koebler (@jasonkoebler.bsky.social) 2026-07-31T16:04:41.345Z However, as Cox later pointed out on Blue Sky, "Google's statement that it includes a watermark that can identify [the Nano Banana images] as AI-generated is completely braindead as to how misinformation works." Think about it. How often have you stopped to verify an image you've seen online? If we're being generous, you could argue people have become more critical of the images they see online, but it was also only a few years ago the entire internet was sharing generated AI images of baby peacocks thinking they were real. On Friday, Google repeated its defense that the images Google Earth generated were watermarked, but added it would also implement stronger guardrails before enabling image generation inside of Google Earth again.

New Google Earth AI tool could fuel misinformation, experts say

Google has launched a new AI tool which allows people to create fake images by superimposing almost anything on top of its own widely-used satellite imagery. The tech giant has integrated its AI image generator Nano Banana 2 into Google Earth, enabling text prompts to generate false scenarios on top of a base layer of real satellite, aerial or 3D imagery - which can then be downloaded and shared on other platforms. Experts have criticised the tool as a means to spread misinformation with the appearance of Google's legitimacy - and highlighted the potential for bad actors to abuse it. A collapsed Eiffel Tower, a sinkhole swallowing the Great Pyramid of Giza and Russian tanks in Ukraine's capital were among the images BBC Verify was able to create when testing the feature, which was rolled out on on Thursday. Google has not yet responded to questions based on BBC Verify's tests, but in a social media post yesterday the company said they "take misinformation seriously" and that "we prevent image creation on harmful topics and are continually updating our protections". AI and misinformation expert Henk van Ess has highlighted the risks this feature poses, creating fake images of a non-existent nuclear power plant in Iran, a refugee camp on the US-Mexico border and a fake hospital in Gaza with a bomb crater next to it. He said Google was allowing "invented" imagery to be "welded to genuine coordinates, drawn on genuine imagery". "The forgery does not have to look convincing on its own. It inherits the credibility of the map it was born on," van Ess added. Google said AI content created by its tools contain invisible watermarks to indicate that they are fake or manipulated, adding that anyone who is "unsure about an image" can check it using the Gemini chatbot app or use the Lens feature in its search. Generally, BBC Verify's tests have found this is effective with images generated by the new feature. But we have have found it is possible to circumnavigate these checks and trick Gemini into saying these fake Google Earth images are real. Tests using external AI detection tools also in some cases failed to identify the Google Earth AI-content. AI-detection researcher Henry Ajdar told BBC Verify the creation of fake imagery in conflict zones could prove particularly "destabilising" when events are fast-moving and information is scarce. "Journalists might be able to check that image... and report on it. But again, not everyone is going to do that," he added. Google also insists guidelines built into its AI model will prevent the creation of imagery depicting "harmful topics", however BBC Verify has found that small changes to prompts can be used to bypass these guidelines. For example, a request to create a "raised platform to hang traitors" next to the UK parliament was rejected. But when a less specific prompt was used, it was accepted and the image was created. We also asked the tool to mow the word "Trump" into the White House lawn, but it said it could not "create that image" based on its guidelines. It did, however, allow a community garden to be generated in the same spot. With the constant flood of AI imagery, Ajder said, spaces assumed to be "unblemished by AI are valuable, particularly for journalists and people trying to do work on the frontlines of rapidly evolving crisis scenarios". "It's concerning because it's another place where sources of trusted information are being eroded by the constant doubt that AI might be involved," he added. For many, Google Earth is the entry point to openly-accessible satellite imagery and can be used to obtain insights into hard to reach areas. "This is potentially particularly damaging to public trust because satellite imagery has historically been seen as an especially trustworthy source of data," Bill Greer, a geospatial analyst and co-founder of the non-profit satellite service Common Space, told BBC Verify. Falsified satellite imagery has already been used to spread misinformation, he added. "Governments are also restricting access to data more and more, so we're likely to see more false images, and fewer real images which will further erode trust." What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

Google adds AI to satellite images, raising fears of deepfakes in the sky

An AI-generated image showing multiple fires on and near Kharg Island, an Iranian island in the Persian Gulf that is home to a strategic oil terminal. Generated and annotated by NPR hide caption Google has unveiled a new feature that allows users to create AI-generated satellite images with the click of a button on its Google Earth platform. In its announcement of the new feature on Thursday, the company said it was designed to work with users' imaginations: "Just zoom in to a place in Google Earth on web (sic), tap 'create image,' and type whatever you want to see," Bryan Horowitz, a product manager wrote. But for experts and analysts who rely on Google's imagery to verify breaking news and atrocities in hard-to-reach parts of the world, the potential to create deepfake satellite imagery at the click of a button was horrifying. NPR was able to easily generate images of Iran's Kharg Island on fire, and a flooded U.S. Capitol complex. Both events, which have not happened, would constitute major news if they were real. "I tried refugees at the Mexican border, a nuclear plant in Iran, a crash in Amsterdam, a hospital with a bomb crater in Gaza. Nothing was refused," Henk van Ess, an open-source researcher who first wrote about the potential damage the tool could cause, told NPR via text. Online, journalists and open-source investigators wondered aloud about Google's decision. "Very curious how or if this idea was red teamed internally because the opportunities for abuse and disinfo are literally boundless," Evan Hill, an visual forensics investigator at the Washington Post wrote on X. Eyes in the sky As the online world fills with AI-generated deepfakes and slop, satellite imagery has been a key tool for understanding what's real and what's not. Open-source investigators have used satellite images to verify events on the ground, and as reference for understanding videos and images shared online. Google Earth imagery is not always the most up-to-date, but its sweeping, high-resolution coverage of the planet can provide important reference imagery for both images from the ground and more up-to-date images from other satellites. "Satellite imagery has been kind of a safe bet when it comes to verifying an event because it's hard to fake," says Jake Godin, a senior researcher with the online group Bellingcat, which does visual forensic investigations. Satellite images are usually controlled by companies or institutions, and their source, a camera hundreds of miles above the earth's surface, has historically been hard to imitate. Fakes from space Godin noted fake satellite imagery has already cropped up in limited cases. Early on in the U.S.-Israel war with Iran, for example, fake images circulated of a damaged U.S. base in Bahrain. The images, which popped up in Iranian media, appeared to use Google Earth images and Google AI to generate fake damage at the base. (Real satellite images later showed that the base was, in fact, damaged, just not in the way shown in the fake image.) But putting the tools together to create AI-generated satellite images with a single click has the potential to vastly accelerate the generation of AI fakes, Godin said. "It's just streamlining the process, which I think is going to make it proliferate more." Godin worries that the spread of fake images will add to confusion and misinformation. "Misinformation travels further and faster than any sort of correction," he said. Moreover, governments will now be more likely to claim satellite images are fake, even if they are real, undermining public trust. Google did not immediately respond to NPR's request for comment about the decision, but in a posting on X, the company said it "takes misinformation seriously." The company noted that all images are marked with its SynthID watermark, which ensures it will be flagged as AI-generated in other Google tools such as Gemini. "In addition, we prevent image creation on harmful topics and are continually updating our protections," it said. But few in the open source community seemed reassured by Google's statements. For van Ess, the decision particularly stings because Google Earth has long been regarded as one of the best tools to verify information posted on social media. Now, he said, "The fake is made inside the thing people use to check whether pictures are true."

Google Pulls Down Feature for AI-Generating Fake Satellite Images on Google Earth After It Immediately Turns Into a Blatant Misinformation Crisis

Can't-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Google Earth is the de facto record of our entire planet. But today, the company undermined its own credibility with a dangerous new AI feature -- and then quickly pulled it down after people started using it to generate blatant misinformation. On Thursday, Google announced that it added an image generation tool straight into the web browser version of the app, allowing anyone to fabricate made-up satellite images of anywhere in the world. It was clearly a misinformation disaster. The AI tool, powered by Google's Nano Banana 2 model, could make a neighborhood look like it'd suffered aerial strikes, turn unsuspecting locales into a warzone, and depict a city as the site of a natural disaster. The AI integration left open source intelligence analysts, who heavily rely on the accurate satellite imagery to monitor areas and in particular conflict zones, especially baffled. Hank Van Ess, one such OSINT researcher, reported on his Substack that he used Google Earth's AI to place refugees near the Mexican border and put a nuclear plant in Iran. Both images could easily be used to fuel certain far-right narratives. "What on earth is Google doing?" Van Ess pondered. Part of the danger, he noted, lies in Google's own boast that the AI integration "creates concepts grounded in the real world." "Grounded in the real world means the invented thing is welded to genuine coordinates, drawn on genuine imagery, often in the same colours and the same light and at the same angle as the picture beside it," he wrote. "The forgery does not have to look convincing on its own. It inherits the credibility of the map it was born on." In our own tests, we found that the Google Earth AI would respond to a request to make a rural Pennsylvanian town look like it suffered a drought that caused dead crops and forest fires. The resulting image was fairly realistic, with huge plumes of smoke blowing over the area. In a less convincing demonstration, the AI made a town look like it suffered a nuclear power plant meltdown by turning a nearby river into toxic sludge and scattering random images of demolished buildings and cars too large for their surroundings. It also responded to a prompt to show the same town "on fire and full of soldiers." It complied with the request, though the requested soldiers looked like Little Green Army Men. The AI tool appeared to have alarmingly few guardrails. Van Hess used it to add a hospital with a bomb crater in Gaza. We also found that it responded to a request to show the White House as in the middle of a warzone, with the explicit instructions of adding "blood" and "fallen soldiers." Again, the AI had trouble producing humans that were proportionate to their surroundings, but it wasn't hard to imagine someone with more time on their hands tinkering with the AI until they produced something realistic. After Van Ess's tweet highlighting his findings went viral, Google responded with a statement. "We take misinformation seriously -- every image created with Nano Banana in Google Earth includes the SynthID digital watermark, so if someone is unsure about an image, they can ask the Gemini app or use Lens in Search to see if the image was AI-generated," the official News from Google account wrote. "In addition, we prevent image creation on harmful topics and are continually updating our protections." SynthID is Google's watermark system that embeds hidden telltales in images generated with its models. Beyond the reality that many people presented with potentially AI doctored satellite photos won't think to verify them with Google's tools, the system is far from perfect. But soon afterward, the company announced that it was pulling the feature down until it could be deployed in a safer way. "We know that people uniquely trust Google Earth for a reliable view of the world," the company added on social. "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. So we're rolling back this feature in Google Earth while we work on implementing stronger guardrails. It's important to note that generated images didn't appear in the main Google Earth experience for others to see and were watermarked as AI generated." The risk was clear. Tal Hagin, who runs the AI-powered OSINT platform Golden Owl, fed Van Ess's photo of the faked Gaza hospital into Google's Gemini chatbot asking it to look for SynthID, and found that it couldn't give a definitive answer. "No reliable signals were detected indicating how the content was created," Gemini responded, per Hagin's screenshot. (In our own test, Gemini said it was "unsure if the image was made with Google AI.") Other testers found that they could give Cuba missile silos and put a giant bomb crater in the middle of the Kremlin. Whether Google's systems could catch faked satellite imagery that its own tech is creating, however, is beside the point. The worry is that the AI creations will fool humans, not other AI models. As a potential fabrication gets circulated online, screenshotted, and compressed countless times over, it'll be harder to use our eyeballs to tell what's real. Of course, the means to do this already existed. If a bad actor wanted to, they could've manually taken satellite screenshots and fed them into their AI image generator of choice. But Google took those extra steps out and streamlined the whole process, not to mention officially wedding Google Earth with a technology that's synonymous with distorting our reality and getting the facts wrong. A widely followed OSINT account fumed at this new dangerous paradigm. "Unbelievably irresponsible and does immediate, catastrophic damage to the credibility of satellite imagery," OSINTtechnical wrote.

Google Earth let me turn my hometown into a warzone with AI prompts, and the misinformation possibilities are disturbing

Google says it takes misinformation seriously, but that sounds as fake as the images I've generated with the tool. Another day, another step towards an AI dystopia. Google has just added a "fun" new feature to Google Earth -- Nano Banana 2, the company's image creation tool. All you need to do is click on the "create image" button, type in a prompt, and seconds later you'll have a phony picture masquerading as a real satellite and aerial image from Google Earth. Once upon a time I would have found this ludicrous -- that a tool designed to accurately showcase our planet would be touting a feature that lets you make up absolute nonsense. But now we live in a world where the most popular search engine regularly makes up lies. For a while, Google was convinced I was married, possibly because I, at one point, mentioned my character having a wife in Crusader Kings 3. At least this was largely harmless -- but Google's AI summaries regularly hallucinate and misinterprets things, to the point that it cannot be trusted at all. Manufacturing warzones, riots, crimes -- these are less harmless. But Google Earth now lets you create whatever slop you want. This morning, I asked Google Earth to generate an image of tanks and troops moving down a street near my home. I did not save the image, because I have no intention of putting something on the internet that could be used for some nefarious purpose. But feel free to try it for yourself. I should add that the image Google Earth created for me was not particularly realistic. Some of the tanks, for instance, were as large as buildings. And nobody is going to look at the header image I generated via Google Earth for this article and think "Oh god, an asteroid is hurtling towards us!" AI image creation is inconsistent at best. But Google realises this, which is why it lets you add more prompts to refine the image -- to make it as realistic as possible. Since the feature went live, I've seen plenty of images that, without knowing about Nano Banana 2's integration, look pretty convincing. Digital Digging's Henk van Ess created an image of refugees massing at the Mexican border, which looked troublingly real. It's easy to see how this tool could be used for propaganda and misinformation, to drum up hate and stoke fears. Google presents the tool as this cute wee thing that will let you add community gardens to abandoned plots or recreate ancient Pompeii, before the eruption of Vesuvius. That's not how it's going to be used. Google actually responded to the Digital Digging article on X. Here's what it had to say: This is weak. OK, yes, Google Earth includes a SynthID digital watermark. So, as per usual, you can use AI tools to identify an AI image. But this is an abduction of responsibility. We're the ones who have to figure out if something is fake or not. Using Google's tools to do it. As van Hess points out, this is only helpful if the image reaches you unaltered through Google. He ran a clip of him creating the Mexican refugee image through the AI detection tool Hive. It was 99.2% certain the image was real. Because it was real, in the sense that the recording of van Ess creating the image was legit. So it's pretty easy to bypass detection tools. And yeah, some savvy people will immediately be suspicious unless they can see the original image. Most people don't have time for that. They will have an immediate reaction. And then share it all over social media, where more people will fall for it. By the time it's outed as fake, the damage may have already been done. And the people who fell for it won't be going back to double check. What about the second part of Google's tweet? "In addition, we prevent image creation on harmful topics and are continually updating our protections." I turned my hometown into a warzone. That's not a bit of fun. That could be harmful. But Google Earth created this image in seconds. Is pretending that there's a vast gathering of refugees waiting at the Mexican border also just a bit of harmless fun? How about a bombed hospital in Gaza, or a nuclear plant in Iran? All three were created by van Ess. Sure, people can use all sorts of AI image creation tools to make fakes like this. But people are more likely to give them weight when they clearly come from Google Earth -- a tool that we've been trained to trust. This is one of the most powerful, influential companies on the planet not just peddling lies, but giving the whole planet the tools to create their own fun little bits of misinformation. The only comfort is that, naturally, Google wants to monetise this. Regular users will only be able to make a couple of images a day, reducing how much chaos they can sow, and potentially stopping them from being able to refine images to make them as realistic as possible. So casual trolls will be pretty limited in what they can do. But there is a free trial for new Google Cloud users, and the $75-$150 per month cost won't matter to the more dedicated propagandists. This sucks, and I am so, so tired.

Google launches new satellite image AI tool, alarming researchers

Washington (United States) (AFP) - Google announced a new feature allowing Google Earth users to generate AI visualizations on top of the service's satellite imagery, sparking concerns from researchers and open-source intelligence experts about the potential for disinformation. The "create image" tool, rolled out Thursday, integrates Google's Nano Banana 2 image-generation technology to let users zoom into locations and build images in seconds based on Google Earth satellite, aerial and 3D-mapping data. The company unveiled the feature as a way to "visualize history, create real estate plans and more." But disinformation researchers are warning it could enable bad actors to misuse Google Earth -- a key resource for fact-checking and verification -- to create realistic geospatial fakes. "Google spent 20 years building the reference the world checks against," digital investigations expert Henk Van Ess wrote on Substack. "Today it added a button that makes things up." "The forgery does not have to look convincing on its own," Van Ess added. "It inherits the credibility of the map it was born on." Brady Africk, a research analyst at the American Enterprise Institute specializing in satellite imagery analysis, told AFP the Google Earth update "makes it easier to generate convincing fake satellite imagery that can spread quickly online and mislead the public." "These AI-generated fakes, growing more common, may also erode public trust in satellite imagery, and make the jobs of journalists and researchers more difficult." In a response to AFP on X, Google said images created with the feature include SynthID digital watermarks, invisible markers embedded in media generated using the company's artificial intelligence tools. Users can ask Google's Gemini chatbot if a SynthID is present. "We take misinformation seriously," the company wrote. Google's statement said the company prevents "image creation on harmful topics" and its AI policy instructs users against "misinformation, misrepresentation or misleading activities." Yet AFP's tests of the feature Friday were able to fabricate satellite images that could have serious global consequences: an explosion in Paris, a nuclear site in Iran, a bomb crater in Russia and an Islamic State group training ground in Syria. The tool also fulfilled prompts to visualize other fake scenes, including floods across Bangladesh, a migrant caravan camped at the US-Mexico border and a suspicious warehouse housing vans in Georgia -- one of several states US President Donald Trump has falsely accused of widespread election fraud. Similar fakes have had real-world impacts. In 2023, an AI image depicting an explosion at the Pentagon briefly rattled the markets. Early in the US war with Iran, an AI-altered satellite image depicting a destroyed US military base garnered millions of views across platforms. "I cannot stress how irresponsible this is," Ross Burley, executive director of the London-based Centre for Information Resilience, told AFP. "Trust in satellite imagery has taken decades to build and could be irrevocably damaged overnight." The group is calling on Google to reverse the decision, Burley said. GeoConfirmed, a volunteer-driven open-source intelligence project that verifies visuals from conflicts around the globe, also urged Google to reconsider. "We are already observing individuals exploiting the new Google Earth web tool to make military positions, relabel buildings as schools, and experiment with manipulating the information environment," the group wrote on X. "The primary, and perhaps only, practical use of this tool appears to be the creation and dissemination of mis- and disinformation."