Want to see Lady Liberty riding the Sphinx? Google Earth will now let you do that, for better or worse

Google Earth has a new experimental feature, and it let me put the Statue of Liberty on the Egyptian Sphinx. The Nano Banana 2 image creation tool is now available in Google Earth, and even though Google markets it as a useful tool to bring history to life, you can do some crazy stuff with it. Oh, the joys of AI!

Nano Banana 2 is now available in Google Earth

You can create all kinds of funny scenarios with this new feature. | Images by Google Earth

Google's AI image generation model, Nano Banana 2, is now baked inside Google Earth. The feature is experimental, and you can try it even with a free plan (it's limited to three images).

For the first time, you can generate custom images using Google Earth’s satellite, aerial, and 3D imagery alongside Nano Banana, which creates concepts grounded in the real world.

- Bryan Horowitz Product Manager, Google Earth

All you need to do is open Google Earth, visit the site you want to temper with, and click on Tools → Image Creation.

Then you describe what you want to see in a prompt text field, and voila! It helps if you switch to 3D view before you start messing with history. I made the Statue of Liberty ride the Sphinx as a joke, but you also can use this AI power in a much more mature and useful way.

What do you think about the new Create Image AI feature in Google Earth?

Bringing history to life

That's the first marketing point for the new feature in the post Google made on its blog. The example posted is turning Pompei into a living and breathing Roman city.

But I made something cooler. I went to General Robert E. Lee's headquarters in Gettysburg and made Google Earth recreate the iconic battle.

Not sure if this looks right, but it's cool nonetheless. | Image by Google Earth

I'm not an expert in American history, and the result I got is probably wildly inaccurate, but it's still a cool way to bring some action to static history images.

Infographics and other useful info

According to Google, you can also use Nano Banana 2 to spice up any Google Earth site with infographics and additional data.

You can, for example, visit the Michigan Stadium and make Google Earth create an infographic with cool statistics for the largest stadium in the US.

This could be very useful in history and geography classes, where a 3D image with a cool graphic sparks much more interest than a simple photo in a textbook.

Real estate and visualizing your future house (or a massive Tokyo project)

If you happen to be a construction magnate, you can see your Tokyo project visualized. | Images by Image by Google Earth

You can use the new feature to create real estate plans for a future project and visualize it before you start building.

Professionals already do this using complicated 3D software (and also charge quite a lot for it), but now, Nano Banana 2 lets everyone dip their toes into building and architecture design.

Of course, don't expect Google Earth to be super accurate, but at least you can visualize your project before you start, using real satellite images with just a few clicks and a prompt. The possibilities are endless.

AI done right or just a gimmick?

I think the genie is already out of the bottle, so to speak. You can already temper with images using AI, Google just made it a lot easier to do it inside Google Earth.

You can use it to do some useful work, or you can just fool around, there's no harm done. Just the rising prices of RAM and memory, but hey, you can make Lady Liberty ride the Sphinx, right?

What do you think about this new AI feature inside Google Earth? AI done right, or just the latest gimmick? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.