Digital Maps

Google Earth spent two decades earning something almost impossible in the digital age: unquestioned trust. Now, by layering generative AI onto real satellite imagery, Google is sacrificing that trust for a feature nobody asked for. The result isn’t a more powerful tool — it’s a compromised one. When a documentary platform starts generating fiction, every image becomes suspect, and the researchers, educators, and curious citizens who relied on it are left navigating a world where the map no longer matches the territory.