Google Earth Gets an AI Chatbot to Help Chart the Climate Crisis
Google came find a way to better map disasters on Earth, predict them and be able to track the communities and ecosystems that will be affected. If you want to know what’s straining the environment in your neck of the woods, just ask.
Google Earth AI, a merger of the Google Earth and Gemini AI systems, was introduced in July. Part of that effort is an AI model called AlphaEarth Foundations, which turns terabytes of satellite data into useful data layers tracing the history of what’s happening on the planet’s surface.
The combined system allows users to analyze historical landscape data that can reveal large climate changes over the years. For example, users can observe rising water levels in flood-prone areas, chart changes in surface temperatures across regions of the planet, or observe the effects of clean air policies by studying changes in air pollution.
Now, Google has revealed new features coming to its Earth AI platform. Users can now interact with the AI model by asking it questions like you would with a chatbot. One example Google gave was asking Earth AI to “find algae blooms” to help monitor water supplies. The system will search satellite images and its troves of collected data to give a list of results.
