Nano Banana 2 removed from Google Earth

Posted by taubek 2 days ago

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Comments

Comment by SwellJoe 2 days ago

There are a lot of things reasonable people would use AI for. This is not one of them. This is a crazy idea. Just plain bonkers. No sense to be found. "Oh, you want to see what's at that location? How about we make something up for you?"

Comment by paxys 2 days ago

Yeah this has “PM trying to put an AI release on their promo packet” written all over it.

Comment by ashleyn 2 days ago

They could've done a lot more interesting things with AI in Google Earth though. Think planning a travel itinerary, or plaintext search of a POI.

I was just using Earth to plan an irrigation setup in my backyard, would've been damn nice to have MCP there to generate paths and circular regions illustrating coverage.

Comment by chrisandchris 2 days ago

What I find interesting - and seems absolutely logic for such a large company - that it's fine for a group of people to work on something tha is clearly to fail from Day 1, and it just seems to be ok.

Comment by 2 days ago

Comment by serf 2 days ago

I didn't use the feature, so I don't know if it was capable of this, but the thing you describe sounds potentially useful for land developers or folks trying to conceptualize buildings/city-development.

the people who make those stupid renders of yet-to-be-built strip malls filled with people and live bands that they use to sell development plans to city commerce groups.

Comment by ncr100 2 days ago

Does this move us closer to needing registries of authentic images? (White-listing? Only a partial solution.)

Google's response today, in addition to removing nano banana from Earth, was that people should just use Google's synthID(?) AI detection app, to determine if this is a blacklisted (effectively) image.

Of course that's impractical because a million people could quickly receive the image .. the image would make an impression on them before detection. And, this would also mean that Google's AI detection software needs to be ran by every human for every image that they view, in order to determine if it's valid. So, let's say that's 100 images, so that's a 100 to the millionth power? (Did I really get a CS degree?) I think it's just 100 million visits to Google synthID tool.. lol.

If we go with a white listing approach then we know that we should trust the image. If we go with a blacklisting approach then we only know that we should not trust the image, which we already knew before we ran the tool....

- https://www.digitaldigging.org/p/how-to-plant-a-nuclear-plan... original article is more interesting, also linked in above main article

Comment by phillipseamore 2 days ago

Watermarking is for fools. Those doing the generation and watermarking will control what is perceived as false or true. Watermarks have historically been about proof of ownership or origin. Watermarking fake creations works in reverse, all of a sudden what's void of watermarking is true, but those that control the watermarking can either add them to truths to turn them into fakes or skip watermarking for certain people or organizations, making their fake creations become truths.

Comment by xtajv 2 days ago

I've toyed with the idea of issuing LTE IMEI-like identity numbers for digital cameras (and a LTE IMSI/SIM-like identity number to identify a paying accountholder who wishes to subscribe to an image-creator attestation service).

Each photograph would attach cryptographically-verifiable metadata attesting to both the identity of the camera and the person who owns it. (Say, m="Camera 123 owned by subscriber 456 created a raw 20MP image with sha 0xdeadbeef... at time 2026-01-23 4:56pm" countersigned by both the device and subscriber keys).

Image compression would be an immediate issue. Key lifetime management would be another major issue, as would key revocation behavior. Device manufacturers would take time to buy in and phase in hardware support. Consumers would object to yet another subscription service. Privacy and freedom-of-the-press advocates would probably have something to say about establishing a norm where we doubt the legitimacy of any digital images that refuse to "out" their creator.

And other than those pesky little non-starters, I've yet to find anything wrong with it :'-)

(see also: Schneier's Law)

Comment by r721 2 days ago

Relevant:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_Credentials

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_Authenticity_Initiativ...

Comment by ncr100 1 day ago

Nice.

I see this as A stepping stone to personal digital identity.

Comment by ncr100 1 day ago

Very nice. I think this is important work.

I also think we need to consider modulating the meaning .. eg This camera is owned by XYZ person ... Since I think it could be a much more short term ownership.

Ie if I take one of these photographs and then register the media with my identity / private keys then I can assert This Is Mine.

Every media output before and after that from this camera is only circumstantially related to me.

Comment by altairprime 1 day ago

Various digital cameras already support in-camera crypto-signatures created by the sensor package iirc, it’s just not the sort of thing you find in typical consumer hardware. Look into forensics specialty gear perhaps?

Comment by justsomehnguy 2 days ago

A bad actor takes your camera with all your crypto identity and shoots some illegal pictures or pictures of pictures.

Straight to jail.

Comment by altairprime 1 day ago

The proof is of unmodification, not of handler; for that, you want a second sensor in the eyepiece.

Comment by justsomehnguy 1 day ago

Yes, exactly.

Comment by mimischi 2 days ago

Is this the fastest Google has killed one of its own products (features)?

Comment by sunaookami 2 days ago

They have announced a mobile app for AI Studio but now they removed it before it even launched so... ;) https://9to5google.com/2026/07/31/gemini-ai-studio-app/

Comment by eichin 2 days ago

Even the Microsoft Kin lasted 48 days (I thought it had been cancelled on launch day, but digging back it was just the tech press saying "This was a mistake from Day One" which is certainly true, but not the same thing :-)

Comment by dgrin91 2 days ago

Tay lasted 16 hours. Depending on how long Nano banana was live here (unclear from the article) it might have been shorter.

Comment by Ancalagon 2 days ago

Why does Google Earth need anything remotely related to AI image gen?

Comment by chedabob 2 days ago

A Product Manager in some AI-adjacent department needs a promotion.

Comment by netsharc 2 days ago

"Google career progression: shipped a feature this quarter [x]"...

Ah, box-ticking your way to oblivion...

Comment by walrus01 2 days ago

It doesn't. Whoever is above the Nano Banana 2 team at Google is pushing some agenda that forcibly integrates their AI slop image generator into other teams' products.

Comment by ChrisArchitect 2 days ago

Related earlier:

Google Earth's New AI Lets Anyone Fabricate Satellite Images

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49124898

Comment by bko 2 days ago

> Tonight I typed just one sentence into Google Earth and put refugees near the Mexican border. Then I planted a nuclear plant in Iran. What on earth is Google doing? Check my latest post here:

We're back to nerfing Google's products because "safety". Yes, you can obviously do this stuff, like you can obviously use Excel to open up a financial statement, change some numbers and tweet about it.

The obvious answer, and I believe it's already being utilized, is watermarks. There's been a lot of research in creating imperceptible, unremovable fingerprints from the generated image. Think very subtle statistical patterns in the generated pixels.

Instead we're going to get some long prompt about how not to do bad things that steps all over the user's intent.

https://x.com/henkvaness/status/2082912544394498228?s=20

Comment by mysterydip 2 days ago

Unless the watermark is a giant “This is fake” diagonally across the center of the image, everything will get shared virally in the 3 second attention span of doomscrolling without a second look.

Comment by zb3 2 days ago

We already have open source image editing models, so how is this Google fault? This is UGC..

If I type something nefarious in Google search bar and then share that screenshot, is Google to blame for not even refusing rendering that text inside the input field?

Comment by varun_ch 2 days ago

What is an AI image generator inside Google Earth useful for if not generating believable but fake images that look like they’re from Google Earth?

Comment by zb3 2 days ago

That's a separate issue - of course it's only so that someone at google can tick a box "I've shipped an AI feature" to get promoted.

But we didn't gain any new ability to produce fake images, fake images can already be produced easily, even those that pretend they're from Google Earth. This was already possible, so I don't understand the concern here..

Are tech companies now responsible for everything the user does? That would end with total enslavement, don't go in that direction.

Comment by varun_ch 2 days ago

tech companies are responsible for the products they ship, aren’t they? a company shouldn’t release something that could only be used for Bad Things

Comment by voakbasda 2 days ago

So you want to ban guns? Good and bad quickly become subjective, depending on how you view their use in different scenarios.

Comment by zb3 2 days ago

It could be used for "good things" too, as you could see in their promo post.

If I make a text editor, am I now responsible if someone uses it to write Mein Kampf? Back then people didn't complain that a notepad doesn't censor user input, but if we continue with your logic, we'll be surveiled constantly, I don't want that dystopian future to become reality.

Comment by boston_clone 2 days ago

instead of making potentially weak comparisons, could we consider why this feature was implemented in the first place? image editing models exist for good reason - I struggle to see a clear “why” for this product other than to cram generative content in yet another existing product.

Comment by g42gregory 2 days ago

When they talk about everybody losing their jobs, that doesn’t bother them one bit. In fact, they seem to be truly happy when they talk about that. But this, Oh No!

Comment by 2 days ago

Comment by rossant 2 days ago

I can't wait for nano banana on pathology images.

Comment by nc55g3g 2 days ago

"Trusted view of the world" but you could make bomb craters in Gaza. SynthID watermark doesn't fix that.

Comment by snvzz 2 days ago

Censorship is now being called `guardrails`.

Comment by iamleppert 2 days ago

Maybe LLMs will be the final nail in the coffin for putting every little ounce of every little article behind an annoying paywall.

A world model that ingests data in real-time from every flock camera, every iPhone, and every Rayban meta spy glasses won't have any need for journalists.

Comment by Jamesbeam 2 days ago

A man cannot have fun any more these days.

Is allowing a man to generate corn circles to send conspiracy theorists on a wild goose chase through the UK for the weekend really too much to ask for?