What was even the point of this; what was the intended use case?
I'm serious, I have no idea who this is for. Other than to show people that their AI can badly superimpose pictures of Godzilla over maps.
It's easier for the news and the government to deepfake things like "huge mobs of Mexican narcoterrorists just over the border" or "there's a nuclear missile silo in Iran" or whatever with this.
It's weird to make it public if that's the case.
Nah, that just helps to normalize it and let people think it's just harmless and fun.
Or erode all trust in imagery so when something real and terrible comes out no one believes it.
Don’t look up!
In large organizations when the order comes down from on high that 'we are all in on whatever' AI in this case, middle managers and product owners start looking for ways to ram that thing into their product so they can keep playing the game.
So it's just another solution in search of a problem basically?
That's the whole story from the beginning. It's not good and trustworthy enough for the real work but they've poured all that money in there so it needs to be used.
i'll take a shot.
education: these are the pyramids of giza. this is what they used to look like.
real eatate: generate an image of how the development of somethjng would look
business: generate a map with detaled renederings of all their locations.
I would prefer to have human generated images in all those cases, education needs to be accurate or it's not worth it, I don't want the AI interpreting what the pyramids used to look like I want a render based on archaeologists analysis. A new development will have a particular look, in order for the image to be useful it has to be an accurate representation of the building, an AI will just put something generic there.
I wouldn't take a plausible-but-not-accurate result for any of these applications
There's also a big push internally to add AI features to their products. I don't think this was some shadowy push to discredit satellite imagery (to help Israel I guess?) - the more mundane explanation that this was a poorly conceived feature thought up by some team internally to meet business demands unfortunately rings far more likely to me.
Edit: I want to make it clear that I'm not defending Google or the team that made this feature here. This is awful, and they should have seen it coming. But falling into conspiracies and looking for the man behind the curtain just leads to overlooking the mundane people who just follow orders or fail to consider the impact and ethics of their actions. We can't reach these people (or consider these lessons for ourselves) if we talk past them (especially if they dismiss criticism as coming from it off touch conspiratists).
But all those resources already exist without AI.
Isn't this really the only valid reason for any AI image generation? Things I've AI image generated: 1) Godzilla riding a Unicycle B) Godzilla taking a math test #) Godzilla fixing a printer iv) Godzilla roasting a marshmallow with his breath V) My corporate logo with Godzilla attacking superimposed. None of the above is a joke.
I AM FUCKING TIRED OF THIS SHIT YOU WANT THE REAL REASON WE CREATED AI? Rick and Morty needed to run for millions of years but the actors, artists and creators would all be dead. So we created AI to immortalize them so they would make Rick and Morty for a million years.
AI is unintentionally hilarious. The biggest problem is that the humor rarely translates to others, so it's sort of just a joke for you to enjoy and then throw away.
And we're destroying the environment for it
I work in this space: you can use it to mock up commercial developments, changes in land use, etc., to see what it would look like. Somewhat useful when presenting rather dry architectural diagrams into realistic looking scenes.
Now, why it was broadly opened to the public is unclear to me other than being a flex?
you can use it to mock up commercial developments
Fair, but aren't there better solutions for this already?
Depends on how you define “better.” You can generate many variants of a scene this way, at night say, or in snowy conditions. You can mock up emergency response situations. It’s part of the story you’re telling but not a straight up replacement.
I guess by better I mostly mean "without AI"
It's worse than all that. I clicked on all the Xitter links so you wouldn't have to, at the bottom is this post from this guy who was able to put a photorealistic image of a nuke plant in Iran, and a throng of migrants at the US-Mexican border, both of which didn't exist in the source material:
https://www.digitaldigging.org/p/how-to-plant-a-nuclear-plant-in-iran
We know that this didn't come out of a vacuum, this capability has been there and was only recently released to the public. We also know that this Administration is in very close with all the tech bros enshittifying everything, and they like to lie, especially about history.
So, now we know what the October Surprise before this election is going to be: the Administration is going to use fake satellite imagery to rile everyone up. We'll be lucky if they don't drop some nukes in the process....
photorealistic image of a nuke plan
"Photorealistic". It seems a screenshot from SimCity 4
Same for the fake trump statue
Maybe the hallucinated text nearby the white house has a bit of truth? It says "The Whine House [something in Cyrillic] pederast"
And also the fake crater nearby the hospital in Gaza is blatantly fake: IRL there's only the crater instead of the hospital as unfortunately all the patients and doctors were terrorists
And if you do get a true believer to visit the real Google Earth and see the lack of the faked addition, they'll claim that Google replaced the "real" version with what they're seeing.
They could have done that already.
Using loaded language like "deepfakes of disasters" is both disingenuous and cheapening of the word deepfake. Would they use the same words to describe a kid scribbling in some monsters on a paper road map? Because it's the same thing.
"Henk van Ess, for example, created extremely realistic deepfakes, including fake refugee camps along the US-Mexico border and a nuclear plant in Iran."
I love how he instantly tried some of reasons the US government would want this thing to exist. Unfortunately I imagine the government would still be able to get access to it, so I expect to see news that Trump has posted loads of images of these same topics along with images of him wearing Space Marine armor and bringing the light of justice to brown people 'round the globe.
Google is run by assholes and fools. They should be broken apart.
Is this why the actually good Google Earth Pro is being sunsetted for the much worse web-only version? So they can push horseshit like this on us?
Highly likely
this is one of the things that make me love humans
Like asking people to make omelette and then get ass mad eggs are being broken in the process.
Google Earth haha. Good thing I wiped that nasty ass shit off my PCs a year ago when I saw "Gulf of America."
I'm glad they're finally throwing all their legacy software down the AI garbage disposal.
They're actually killing the PC version next year, which is actually a problem.
It's the goto solution for sharing GIS layers for free using a simple platform. Anybody can download Google Earth Pro for free, and we can export KML/KMZ files from ESRI or QGIS that will be viewable over fairly recent satellite imagery without having to pay thousands for software and/or imagery licensing.
Somebody paid me a pretty penny for an old copy of "street atlas USA" I think he was in the similar line of work. Something about how he needs it for palm pilot of all things. Pretty interesting how one person's novelty is another's must-have tech.
With plugins QGIS can do this on its own though. Just use quickmapservices or manually import the Google imagery (still available online)
I use QGIS for a living. Adding layers and image services is easy for me, but not to someone who doesn't even know what GIS is. I couldn't teach someone how to use it in seconds like I can GE, which consists of "Open Google Earth, and click and drag the file into the window".
And with GE, you don't have to license the satellite imagery or teach someone how to add web-based tile services to GQIS.
They can also use the draw tool in GE and right-click the drawing and export a file I can open in QGIS or ESRI without them having to know anything about projections or datums.
Ahhhh damit! I'd have loved to have used it to create a giant Trump hippo splattering poop across the White House lawn and where the new ballroom is.. Oh well. Wasn't fast enough to enjoy the fun.
they should set up a Ministry of Truth to handle things like this
I don't think the Super Government would even support such a company. Google doesn't dutifully pay its dues.
Paywall
I think they do this to promote their new SynthID.
Oh good. They made an “anger boomer” button.
My neighbor about to be host to several mercenaries
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
