Google has come up with a way to better map Earth’s disasters, predict them, and be able to track which communities and ecosystems are going to be harmed. If you want to find out what’s straining the environment in your neck of the woods, all you have to do is ask.
Google Earth AI, a fusion of Google’s 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 tracking the history of what happens across the surface of the planet.
The combined system lets users parse historical landscape data that can reveal great shifts in the climate over the years. For example, users can look at rising water levels in flood zones, chart changes in surface temperatures across regions of the planet, or see the effects of clean air policies by studying changes in air pollution.
Now, Google has revealed new capabilities coming to its Earth AI platform. Users can now interact with the AI model by asking it questions like you would with a chatbot. An 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.
The chatbot-style queries in action.
Courtesy of Google
To run these queries, Google is using a Gemini-powered geospatial reasoning model to combine Earth AI models with other models tracking weather, population data, imagery, and historical data to identify patterns in how disasters or other widespread events affect the world. The hope is that the model will be able to predict not only where a hurricane is headed, but also which communities are most likely to shoulder the effects.
The new chatbot capabilities will only be available for users on Google Earth’s professional subscription plans, which Google introduced this month. The Professional tier, which lets users access more advanced data layers like surface temperature and elevation contours, starts at $75 per month. The Professional Advanced tier is $150. Some core Google Earth features, like the ability to see a time-lapse video of certain parts of the globe, are available on all plans, including the free standard version of Google Earth.
Text searches access multiple data layers in Google Earth to fetch a list of results.
Courtesy of Google
This release marks the latest effort by Google to show off its climate-awareness bonafides. The company has previously partnered with satellite manufacturers to better monitor disasters like wildfires from low Earth orbit. The company has also joined up with researchers to create a database logging the activity of the world’s power plants. Maybe Google’s efforts to curb environmental devastation will eventually offset the impacts of AI’s ever-growing energy needs.