Google pulled the plug on an AI-powered image editing feature inside Google Earth roughly one day after launching it. The tool, called Nano Banana 2, let users modify satellite imagery using simple text prompts, effectively creating deepfakes of real-world locations with a few keystrokes.
Here’s the thing: it took less than 24 hours for someone to demonstrate exactly why that’s a problem.
What happened
Nano Banana 2 launched on a Thursday as a new Google Earth feature designed to let users generate AI-altered versions of actual satellite images.
Digital ethics researcher Henk van Ess quickly put the tool through its paces. He used text prompts to generate images showing refugees near the Mexican border and a bomb crater next to a hospital in Gaza. Neither scenario was real. Both looked convincingly like authentic satellite imagery.
