Google rolled out a new feature on Thursday that allowed users to deploy Nano Banana 2, its AI image generator, to create fabricated images inside its satellite imagery mapping app Google Earth. The whole point of this feature, Google said, was to get creative with geography.
But critics quickly pointed out that the tool could be used to create and spread misinformation. The tool, which was prompt-based and allowed pretty much any image to be superimposed over real maps, seemed like a recipe for a deluge of geospatial slop.