{"slug": "google-u-turns-on-ai-earth-image-feature-after-users-collapse-eiffel-tower", "title": "Google U-turns on AI Earth image feature after users ‘collapse Eiffel Tower’", "summary": "Google has pulled its new AI-powered Google Earth image generation feature just 24 hours after launch, following tests by researchers and media outlets that showed it could fabricate convincing fake satellite images, including a bomb blast in Los Angeles and a collapsed Eiffel Tower. The tool, powered by Google's Nano Banana model, was intended to let users create 'visual stories' of real places, but AI researcher Henk van Ess and others demonstrated it could insert false events into real satellite imagery, raising concerns about the credibility of satellite evidence used by courts, insurers, and war crimes investigators.", "body_md": "A new [AI ](https://metro.co.uk/tag/artificial-intelligence/)tool that lets users make phoney edits of real [Google ](https://metro.co.uk/tag/google)Earth [satellite images](https://metro.co.uk/2026/08/01/man-stumbles-meteor-crater-planning-camping-trip-google-maps-29245742/) has been pulled only 24 hours after launch.\n\nThe tech giant [rolled out ](https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/earth/nano-banana-google-earth-image-generation/)a free tool worldwide on Thursday that lets users create ‘visual stories’ of real places using its powerful image generator.\n\nShowing off the feature, Google suggested city slickers could turn a car park into a garden or a teacher could show what a site looked like in 78 AD.\n\nYet experts and [social media](https://metro.co.uk/tag/social-media/) users instead found that it could edit a ‘plane hitting a Manhattan skyscraper’ or a fake nuclear plant in [Iran](https://metro.co.uk/tag/iran/).\n\nAI researcher Henk van Ess wrote in a [blog post](https://www.digitaldigging.org/p/how-to-plant-a-nuclear-plant-in-iran) on Thursday: ‘Tonight I typed just one sentence into Google Earth and put refugees near the Mexican border. Then I planted a nuclear plant in Iran.\n\n‘Then I put a fatal crash on a street in [Amsterdam](https://metro.co.uk/tag/amsterdam/). Google’s own satellite imagery underneath all three.\n\n‘What on earth is Google doing?’\n\n## What was the feature?\n\nGoogle Earth is a spatial information service made of a [patchwork of real satellite, aerial and 3D imagery ](https://metro.co.uk/2024/03/07/6-mh370-flight-wreckage-sightings-google-maps-explanations-20393635/)captured by Google over 20 years.\n\nBy clicking on a ‘Create Image’ tab on the web version of the app, users could type a prompt – an instruction for an AI – to ask it to edit a site.\n\nGoogle’s examples show the AI-generated image isn’t always photo-realistic and could be stylised like a cartoon.\n\nThe original Google Earth frame could also be visually different, such as turning a bright blue sky into a sunset.\n\nTechnology news outlet [404 Media](https://www.404media.co/google-earths-new-ai-lets-anyone-fabricate-completely-bullshit-satellite-images/)’s tests found the tool could add a ‘bomb blast and crater’ to Los Angeles within 10 or so seconds.\n\nThe [BBC](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9349yx2ydvo), meanwhile, forged images of a ‘collapsed Eiffel Tower, a sinkhole swallowing the Great Pyramid of Giza and Russian tanks’ in Kyiv, Ukraine.\n\n## ‘You don’t get better fakes, you get far more of them’\n\nVan Ess told **Metro **that making fake images is nothing new – but the ease of making them is.\n\n‘Every fake you could make with this tool was possible in Photoshop 20 years ago,’ he said. ‘The barrier was never skill, it was effort.’\n\nVan Ess recorded himself prompting Nano Banana, Google’s AI model for image generation, to insert a ‘traffic accident’ in Amsterdam.\n\n‘And crowd,’ the prompt added, ‘make whole picture in high-resolution.’\n\nThe model forged an image of a red car that had smashed into the side of ROBO-BAR in De Weteringschans, with shattered glass covering the road.\n\nVan Ess said that Google Earth has long been used by digital sleuths and journalists who examine open-source intelligence, or OSINT.\n\n‘A satellite image isn’t a memory, it’s a record – courts, insurers and war crimes investigators treat it as evidence of what stood on a patch of ground on a given day,’ van Ess said, pointing to warzone reporting.\n\nThat’s why adding a tool that uses the same technology that ‘removes tourists from holiday photos’ might not be a ‘good thing’.\n\n‘You don’t get better fakes, you get far more of them, from people who’d never have bothered,’ van Ess added,\n\n‘And they arrive welded to real coordinates, in the same light and at the same angle as the genuine capture beside them.\n\n‘The forgery doesn’t have to be convincing on its own. It inherits the credibility of the map it came from.’\n\n## Google pulls AI Earth tool until it strengthens ‘safeguards’\n\nGoogle [said ](https://x.com/NewsFromGoogle/status/2083024627761082702)on Friday that it takes ‘misinformation seriously’.\n\nAll content made by Google AI content tools has an [invisible watermark](https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/16722517?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid), called SynthID, that Google’s chatbot Gemini can spot.\n\nIn a [post ](https://x.com/NewsFromGoogle/status/2083249962150760610)on X, Google added: ‘We know that people uniquely trust Google Earth for a reliable view of the world.\n\n‘We’ve seen geospatial professionals using this feature for a range of useful purposes, however, we’ve also seen people sharing screenshots of generated imagery that appear to violate our policies.\n\n‘So we’re rolling back this feature in Google Earth while we work on implementing stronger guardrails.\n\n‘It’s important to note that generated images didn’t appear in the main Google Earth experience for others to see and were watermarked as AI-generated.’\n\nGoogle did not specify which images violated its policies but said they were not part of the main Google Earth experience and were watermarked.\n\nVan Ness questioned, however, whether Google’s safeguards can ever hold up, especially as AI images degrade every time they’re screenshotted.\n\n‘So keep AI on the reading side of satellite imagery,’ he added. ‘Shelve it on the painting side.’\n\nMeta was forced into a [near-instant 24-hour U-turn](https://metro.co.uk/2026/07/14/meta-u-turns-ai-image-feature-using-users-snaps-29132922/) last week when it unveiled an AI tool that could edit people’s public Instagram posts.\n\nUsers had to manually opt out if they did not want their public photos to be available to be remixed by the social media titan’s model, Meta AI.\n\nThe company admitted three days later that it ‘missed the mark’ with the feature.\n\n**Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.**\n\n**For more stories like this, **[ check our news page](https://metro.co.uk/news/).\n\nMORE: [Schools warned about unknown dangers of learning devices taking over classrooms](https://metro.co.uk/2026/07/30/schools-warned-unknown-dangers-learning-devices-taking-classrooms-29255541/?ico=more_text_links)\n\nMORE: [OpenAI’s rogue robot tried to hack into other companies – could your data be next?](https://metro.co.uk/2026/07/29/openais-rogue-robot-broke-another-company-data-next-29250299/?ico=more_text_links)\n\nMORE: [Your chat with the AI chatbot Claude could be publicly available online](https://metro.co.uk/2026/07/28/chat-this-popular-ai-chatbot-publicly-available-online-29246394/?ico=more_text_links)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/google-u-turns-on-ai-earth-image-feature-after-users-collapse-eiffel-tower", "canonical_source": "https://metro.co.uk/2026/08/01/google-u-turns-ai-earth-image-feature-users-collapse-eiffel-tower-29274009/", "published_at": "2026-08-01 11:50:16+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-01 12:04:31.010934+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["generative-ai", "ai-ethics", "ai-products"], "entities": ["Google", "Google Earth", "Nano Banana", "Henk van Ess", "404 Media", "BBC", "Metro"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/google-u-turns-on-ai-earth-image-feature-after-users-collapse-eiffel-tower", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/google-u-turns-on-ai-earth-image-feature-after-users-collapse-eiffel-tower.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/google-u-turns-on-ai-earth-image-feature-after-users-collapse-eiffel-tower.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/google-u-turns-on-ai-earth-image-feature-after-users-collapse-eiffel-tower.jsonld"}}