What HappenedOn July 30, 2026, Google added an image-generation feature powered by its Nano Banana 2 model to the web version of Google Earth. They were not inserted into the normal Google Earth experience for other users, and Google said the generated images carried its SynthID watermark. So this wasn't a case of Google Earth itself suddenly displaying fake satellite imagery as if it were real. What it can't easily undo is the credibility the experiment showed AI can borrow from Google Earth itself. A fake event attached to real satellite imagery can look authoritative precisely because the location is real.