Google Earth’s disastrous AI image generation experiment shows need for guardrails
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This article was originally published in Rest of World, which covers technology’s impact outside the West.
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Since Israel and the US launched strikes against Iran in February, plunging the Gulf region into conflict, the countries have also been waging an information war using tools powered by artificial intelligence. To separate fact from fiction, authorities, analysts, and journalists alike turned to commercial satellite imagery, including Google Earth, the closest thing to “ground truth,” with limited access to sites.
Google Earth has long been a trusted infrastructure for the verification field, and is the platform on which open-source investigators are formally trained for conflict work in Syria, Yemen, and Sudan. Yet on July 30, Google launched a new feature that built image generation directly into Google Earth, the product that for two decades was synonymous with satellite image truth.
It meant that users could zoom in to real coordinates, type a prompt, and get an AI-generated photorealistic scene blended into actual satellite and aerial imagery. Within hours, users had conjured a nuclear plant in Iran, a bomb crater beside a Gaza hospital, and floods lapping the US Capitol.
Faking satellite imagery is not new. Google’s own watermarks had exposed its Gemini AI model being used to fake satellite evidence, a recurring feature of Iran’s state-affiliated propaganda. But the...