Nano Banana 2 removed from Google Earth
digitaldigging.org
digitaldigging.org
I was just using Earth to plan an irrigation setup in my backyard, would've been damn nice to have MCP there to generate paths and circular regions illustrating coverage.
the people who make those stupid renders of yet-to-be-built strip malls filled with people and live bands that they use to sell development plans to city commerce groups.
Google's response today, in addition to removing nano banana from Earth, was that people should just use Google's synthID(?) AI detection app, to determine if this is a blacklisted (effectively) image.
Of course that's impractical because a million people could quickly receive the image .. the image would make an impression on them before detection. And, this would also mean that Google's AI detection software needs to be ran by every human for every image that they view, in order to determine if it's valid. So, let's say that's 100 images, so that's a 100 to the millionth power? (Did I really get a CS degree?) I think it's just 100 million visits to Google synthID tool.. lol.
If we go with a white listing approach then we know that we should trust the image. If we go with a blacklisting approach then we only know that we should not trust the image, which we already knew before we ran the tool....
- https://www.digitaldigging.org/p/how-to-plant-a-nuclear-plan... original article is more interesting, also linked in above main article
Each photograph would attach cryptographically-verifiable metadata attesting to both the identity of the camera and the person who owns it. (Say, m="Camera 123 owned by subscriber 456 created a raw 20MP image with sha 0xdeadbeef... at time 2026-01-23 4:56pm" countersigned by both the device and subscriber keys).
Image compression would be an immediate issue. Key lifetime management would be another major issue, as would key revocation behavior. Device manufacturers would take time to buy in and phase in hardware support. Consumers would object to yet another subscription service. Privacy and freedom-of-the-press advocates would probably have something to say about establishing a norm where we doubt the legitimacy of any digital images that refuse to "out" their creator.
And other than those pesky little non-starters, I've yet to find anything wrong with it :'-)
(see also: Schneier's Law)
I see this as A stepping stone to personal digital identity.
Straight to jail.
I also think we need to consider modulating the meaning .. eg This camera is owned by XYZ person ... Since I think it could be a much more short term ownership.
Ie if I take one of these photographs and then register the media with my identity / private keys then I can assert This Is Mine.
Every media output before and after that from this camera is only circumstantially related to me.
By "attesting to ... the person who owns it", I mean to talk about "identity" in the precise sense of "identifying" the relative physical location of whatever entity happens to be in control of some particular key material issued and registered a priori at some secure location. (That is, a supercomputer can bruteforce many kinds of strong cryptography eventually... but unless P = NP, it's not happening quickly. The odds are literally astronomical that one would be able to guess the right answers correctly and quickly. So we can all rest assured that anyone who can make it through a zero-knowledge proof protocol within reasonable time limits must physically control certain private key material).
Again: I am not talking about "identity" in the usual everyday sense of identifying some particular human being.
A better way to put it would be something like "SIM cards, but for cameras". You could even use similar terminology to what LTE has:
- IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity) := the smartcard from your cell carrier which lets you use a particular phone number on their network. (For the camera use-case: you would subscribe to an attestation service that will vouch for your photos. The service would issue you a phone-number-like "subscriber number", perhaps via SIM smartcard, u2f dongle, or other physical "key")
- IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identifier) := the network-specific serial number that device manufacturers issue to each device, in addition to the regular "make-and-model" serial number that one might expect. The function of the IMEI is to label a particular physical device as end-user equipment that can participate in the attestation system. (It also comes in handy to support anti-theft blocklists in the event that user equipment is stolen, and some nefarious third party attempts to connect later).
Note that in the case of LTE devices: it is possible to clone a SIM or steal a mobile device. Fortunately, the IMSI + IMEI combo gives cellular carriers enough information to do something reasonable in those situations. For the camera use-case, an attestation service could similarly do their part: 1. Refuse service if the request IMSI is associated with a spam dialer, a closed account, or a nonpaying subscriber (whose service has been shut off); 2. Refuse service if the request IMEI is associated with a stolen device.
Again, it doesn't give you the usual notion of "identity". But (in theory) it ought to give you something similar to the notion of an in-service phone number.
Ah, box-ticking your way to oblivion...
Google Earth's New AI Lets Anyone Fabricate Satellite Images
We're back to nerfing Google's products because "safety". Yes, you can obviously do this stuff, like you can obviously use Excel to open up a financial statement, change some numbers and tweet about it.
The obvious answer, and I believe it's already being utilized, is watermarks. There's been a lot of research in creating imperceptible, unremovable fingerprints from the generated image. Think very subtle statistical patterns in the generated pixels.
Instead we're going to get some long prompt about how not to do bad things that steps all over the user's intent.
If I type something nefarious in Google search bar and then share that screenshot, is Google to blame for not even refusing rendering that text inside the input field?
But we didn't gain any new ability to produce fake images, fake images can already be produced easily, even those that pretend they're from Google Earth. This was already possible, so I don't understand the concern here..
Are tech companies now responsible for everything the user does? That would end with total enslavement, don't go in that direction.
If I make a text editor, am I now responsible if someone uses it to write Mein Kampf? Back then people didn't complain that a notepad doesn't censor user input, but if we continue with your logic, we'll be surveiled constantly, I don't want that dystopian future to become reality.
A world model that ingests data in real-time from every flock camera, every iPhone, and every Rayban meta spy glasses won't have any need for journalists.
Is allowing a man to generate corn circles to send conspiracy theorists on a wild goose chase through the UK for the weekend really too much to ask for?