Overview
- Google added Nano Banana 2 image generation to Google Earth on July 30 and removed the feature the next day after users created and widely shared fake scenes that appeared to violate policy.
- The tool let people overlay text‑prompted AI images onto Google Earth’s satellite, aerial and 3D basemaps, which made fabricated scenes look anchored to a trusted mapping interface.
- Researchers and reporters, including BBC Verify and Henk van Ess, produced realistic fakes—bomb damage, sinkholes, refugee camps and other disasters—that showed some prompts were accepted and then circulated as screenshots.
- Google says every generated image carried a SynthID watermark and did not appear in the main public Google Earth layers, but experts demonstrated that screenshots and re‑encodings can strip or obscure provenance and defeat detection.
- The rollback underscores risks for journalists, investigators and humanitarian groups that rely on Google Earth for verification and raises pressure for stronger technical controls, clearer policies and better provenance tools before any relaunch.