For two years, Big Tech had one reflex: put generative AI into every product, and ship it fast. This week that reflex hit a wall. Features were pulled within days. Platforms turned on the AI slop their own tools had helped create. And a European law arrived to make the retreat mandatory.
The pattern was the same each time. Ship first, watch the backlash, walk it back. What changed this week is how quickly the walking-back came, and how many companies did it at once.
The features that did not last the week
Google offered the sharpest example. It added its Nano Banana image generator to Google Earth on Thursday, then pulled it on Friday. People had used it to fake a nuclear plant in Iran, refugees at the US border and a bomb crater beside a hospital in Gaza. The tool lasted a single day.
Meta had already done the same in miniature. Weeks earlier it launched an Instagram feature that turned other people’s public photos into AI images. It removed the tool within a week, saying it had “missed the mark”. The reflex is to launch. The correction is to retreat.
