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 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....

"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.

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?

Google is run by assholes and fools. They should be broken apart.

Like asking people to make omelette and then get ass mad eggs are being broken in the process.

Paywall

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 think they do this to promote their new SynthID.

My neighbor about to be host to several mercenaries

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.

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.

this is one of the things that make me love humans

Oh good. They made an “anger boomer” button.

LOL!