Google Earth AI tool raises satellite deepfake fears

Google has added an AI image generator to Google Earth, letting users create and download fabricated scenes layered onto real satellite, aerial and 3D imagery — a move that misinformation experts say could blur one of the internet’s more trusted ways to verify events on the ground.

The feature, launched Thursday, integrates Google’s Nano Banana 2 image generator into Google Earth. Users can zoom to a location, tap “create image” and type a prompt describing what they want to see. “Just zoom in to a place in Google Earth on web (sic), tap ‘create image,’ and type whatever you want to see,” Google product manager Bryan Horowitz wrote in the company’s announcement, according to NPR.

Tests by BBC Verify and NPR showed the tool could generate scenes that would appear alarming if mistaken for real events. BBC Verify said it created images including a collapsed Eiffel Tower, a sinkhole swallowing the Great Pyramid of Giza and Russian tanks in Ukraine’s capital. NPR reported it was able to generate images of Iran’s Kharg Island on fire and a flooded U.S. Capitol complex, neither of which has happened.

Google has not responded to questions from BBC Verify or NPR, according to both outlets. In a post on X, the company said it “takes misinformation seriously” and that it prevents image creation on harmful topics while “continually updating” protections. Google also said AI content made with its tools contains invisible SynthID watermarks that can identify images as fake or manipulated through tools such as Gemini and Google Lens.

But researchers said the safeguards may not be enough. BBC Verify reported that Google’s checks were generally effective in its tests, but that it was possible to bypass some protections and to trick Gemini into saying fake Google Earth images were real. The BBC also said some outside AI detection tools failed to identify Google Earth AI content in certain cases.

Henk van Ess, an AI and misinformation expert and open-source researcher, said he generated fake images of a non-existent nuclear power plant in Iran, a refugee camp on the U.S.-Mexico border and a hospital in Gaza with a bomb crater nearby. “I tried refugees at the Mexican border, a nuclear plant in Iran, a crash in Amsterdam, a hospital with a bomb crater in Gaza. Nothing was refused,” he told NPR by text.

Van Ess told BBC Verify that Google was allowing “invented” imagery to be “welded to genuine coordinates, drawn on genuine imagery.” He added: “The forgery does not have to look convincing on its own. It inherits the credibility of the map it was born on.”

Experts said the risks are especially acute in conflict zones and breaking news situations, where reliable information can be scarce. Henry Ajder, an AI-detection researcher, told BBC Verify that fake imagery from such areas could be particularly “destabilising.” “Journalists might be able to check that image… and report on it. But again, not everyone is going to do that,” he said.

Satellite imagery has long been used by journalists and open-source investigators to corroborate photos, videos and claims from places that are difficult to access. “Satellite imagery has been kind of a safe bet when it comes to verifying an event because it’s hard to fake,” Jake Godin, a senior researcher at Bellingcat, told NPR.

Godin said fake satellite images have appeared before, including images circulated in Iranian media early in the U.S.-Israel war with Iran that appeared to show damage at a U.S. base in Bahrain. Real satellite images later showed the base had been damaged, but not in the way shown in the fake images, NPR reported. Combining Google Earth and AI image generation in one tool, Godin said, could speed the spread of fakes. “It’s just streamlining the process, which I think is going to make it proliferate more.”

Bill Greer, a geospatial analyst and co-founder of the nonprofit satellite service Common Space, told BBC Verify the tool could damage trust in satellite data. “This is potentially particularly damaging to public trust because satellite imagery has historically been seen as an especially trustworthy source of data,” he said.