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Google kills Earth AI generator after one day

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Re: Google kills Earth AI generator after one day

#81

Post by cyanregiment »

steveBK123 wrote: post #70
cyanregiment wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who want to destroy you at work (which I imagine is rampant at Google) will sometimes prevent you from doing something, but they might also encourage you to do it in such a way that you fail spectacularly. Some of my favorites from my career: 1. PM enticing me to "volunteer" to build a PoC over the weekend, to have it ready by Monday morning – come Monday, PoC is shipped live to all international customers. It…

> but they might also encourage you to do it in such a way that you fail spectacularly. A skill one must develop is identifying no-win-scenario tasks that can be avoided. POCs are often such tasks. A teammate and I got roped into some POC where everyone in the room seemed to silently agree the product was not fit for purpose. The meetings went in circles of seemingly trying to find anything they could do to use the p…

These guys with their brothers and uncles!!!

If anyone in tech wants to adopt a grown man hmu I need a network

Re: Google kills Earth AI generator after one day

#82

Post by steveBK123 »

cyanregiment wrote: post #81
steveBK123 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but they might also encourage you to do it in such a way that you fail spectacularly. A skill one must develop is identifying no-win-scenario tasks that can be avoided. POCs are often such tasks. A teammate and I got roped into some POC where everyone in the room seemed to silently agree the product was not fit for purpose. The meetings went in circles of seemingly trying to find anything they could do to use the p…

These guys with their brothers and uncles!!! If anyone in tech wants to adopt a grown man hmu I need a network

The longer I work and the higher I go, the less I believe that we have a meritocracy. Directionally, yes.. but the higher you go the more nepotistic the world really is. And that's putting aside starting conditions which are already not meritocratic.

Even if it's not the compliance/legal definition of "nepotism".. its all "networks" and "relationships".

Re: Google kills Earth AI generator after one day

#83

Post by d4v3 »

steveBK123 wrote: post #72
d4v3 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate? Are they not toxic? Are they toxic, but the chemical analysis wrong?

If you asked your wife "is it ok if I did X" and she said "YES, its not ok to do that.." would that be normal behavior?

Ah I see now. Maybe my brain translated the question implicitly to "Are mums poisonous to cats?". I'm tempted to say it's a minor quibble, but on the other hand, there are probably a good deal of people who may stop reading after "Yes"

Re: Google kills Earth AI generator after one day

#84

Post by steveBK123 »

d4v3 wrote: post #83
steveBK123 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you asked your wife "is it ok if I did X" and she said "YES, its not ok to do that.." would that be normal behavior?

Ah I see now. Maybe my brain translated the question implicitly to "Are mums poisonous to cats?". I'm tempted to say it's a minor quibble, but on the other hand, there are probably a good deal of people who may stop reading after "Yes"

Right and someone in a hurry quickly checking their phone may read the affirmative response as an OK.

It's worse on mobile with large text in my example - https://imgur.com/a/wvNspMT

Imagine your parents asking about a drug combination using an old iPhone SE with large text enabled.

"is zazzafraz and banza ok"

Yes zazzafraz (long scientific name 1) and banza

(long scientifgic name 2) are toxic in combination

Re: Google kills Earth AI generator after one day

#85

Post by xnx »

Amezarak wrote: post #50
haunter wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh nothing serious just traffic accident https://cdn.xcancel.com/video/9829FB6B34807/https%3A%2F%2Fvi... refugees on the streets https://cdn.xcancel.com/video/7631603BD54FB/https%3A%2F%2Fvi... a bomb crater near a hospital in Gaza https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HOgBJEcWQAA--zV?format=jpg&name=... a nuclear power plant in Iran https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HOgBP-OXAAATHWQ?format=jpg&name=... a plane hitting the One World T…

Did Google Earth actually show these as replacements for the true imagery? Or are people simply complaining that people were able to generate these images at all? I'm struggling to understand the controversy.

The controversy is people are desperate to be upset at "big tech" and Google in particular. This feature didn't do anything that couldn't be accomplished with an extra 30 seconds in other AI image editors.

Re: Google kills Earth AI generator after one day

#86

Post by salemh »

vvbull wrote: post #30

This is predictable... they built a misinformation engine capable of generating things like falsified drone strikes, terrorist attacks, industrial accidents, and threatening images. Seems like no one paused and thought "what would the malicious internet do with this?"

[dead]

Re: Google kills Earth AI generator after one day

#87

Post by card_zero »

binary132 wrote: post #26
VCFundedGenYer wrote: post #5

There seem to be very few adults in the room at Google as of the past few years. This also happened with Bard's (remember when they thought Bard was a good name?) racist image generator. Does nobody do QA, UAT, or UX testing anymore?

what’s wrong with the name Bard?

It's not very goord.

Re: Google kills Earth AI generator after one day

#88

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

30 Jul 2026 15:15:01 UTC

Google Rolls Out Nano Banana AI in Earth

https://digg.com/tech/rtkdxzb1

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49111228

[ok]

31 Jul 2026 16:06:51 UTC

Google Earth's New AI Lets Anyone Fabricate Satellite Images

https://www.404media.co/google-earths-new-ai-lets-anyone-fab...

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

[ok]

31 Jul 2026 18:32:08 UTC

The problem with putting an AI image generator in Google Earth

https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/973764/g...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49126938

[ok]

31 Jul 2026 20:04:03 UTC

Google withdraws new Earth AI tool after warnings over misinformation risks

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9349yx2ydvo

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49127949

[ok]

31 Jul 2026 20:43:11 UTC

Google Earth risked ruin with retracted AI tool for making fake satellite pics

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/07/google-earth-releases-swi...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49128310

[ok]

Re: Google kills Earth AI generator after one day

#89

Post by Levitz »

haunter wrote: post #28
rdtsc wrote: post #16

What did that even do. Generate imaginary buildings and structures? I am almost sure this was something for a performance or promotion: “Used AI effectively to…”

Oh nothing serious just traffic accident https://cdn.xcancel.com/video/9829FB6B34807/https%3A%2F%2Fvi... refugees on the streets https://cdn.xcancel.com/video/7631603BD54FB/https%3A%2F%2Fvi... a bomb crater near a hospital in Gaza https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HOgBJEcWQAA--zV?format=jpg&name=... a nuclear power plant in Iran https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HOgBP-OXAAATHWQ?format=jpg&name=... a plane hitting the One World T…

With the ruckus, I thought this would be something that was displayed in Google Earth.

I can't grasp how this is an issue at all? There are other 20 services you can use to do this exact same thing.

Re: Google kills Earth AI generator after one day

#90

Post by card_zero »

Amezarak wrote: post #78
smallerize wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's correct. The end of the article also covers defeating the AI watermark.

Then frankly I find this all overblown and somewhat insane. The AI safetyism moral panic is something I find very demoralizing. It seems like the main legacy of AI will be its use as leverage to annihilate computing freedom and privacy for all time. I am sympathetic to arguments that quantity has a quality all of its own - for example, I think this has deeply impacted privacy. It may have been legal to discreetly fol…

That's reasonable, except "It can be dealt with by cultural understandings of any imagery shifting, and a general return to older (not unprecedented) information environments". What does that mean? Is the older information environment books and newspapers? Then only a tyrant could arrange a return to that state, which didn't prevent the readers being credulous anyway. So the problem can't be dealt with in this way, there's nobody to do the dealing, and we wouldn't want them to deal with it even if they could. You can only hope that people wise up to slop, but we've been hoping that people in general get wiser since the dawn of time.

To some extent, mind you, people really have got wiser, and the wising-up process requires freedom. This is a problem similar to the draconian censorship of enemy propaganda, which wins wars for the good guys at the cost of throwing their good guy status into question.

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