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- Hacker News
- They'll shove AI everywhere, whether it makes sense or not doesn't matter. Sundar said "AI" needs to be everywhere, so they hope integrating AI into X will get them promoted. And unfortunately, this might even work..by zb3
- Good, it was a piece of bad software not to call other things. Who though it was a good idea?by witx
- I liked the feature (once I figured out how to access it, so confusing). But it only let you generate 1 image per day. So kind of useless.by intexpress
- I honestly don't know what the hell Google was thinking. I know shoving AI into everything is the rage these days, but this is simply an even more insane way to demolish the credibility of your own product than the AI overviews in Google Search.
Glad they came to their senses quickly.
- I like the AI overviews.
- I think if Google stopped retreating so quickly with its tail between its legs after getting “embarrassed”, people would stop caring. All of the “sins” that were created via this is nothing that other AI couldn’t produce either.
Part of the sport in making Google look bad is because they know Google will predictably cower when they are embarrassed. If they just said “ya, sometimes people will make bad pics but who cares?” people would stop caring.
Everything that Ars Technica found in my opinion is nothing that other AI image generators couldn’t do on their own. What’s the big deal?
by reenorap - Product managers at Google have a strangehold on their bad releases. It's become a whole thing for engineers to have to please their XFN (cross functional) partners in product and UX for review cycles and promos.by 650
- Any boast about AI accelerating the development lifecycle comes with an equal or greater stock that examples like this become more frequent when there are less opportunities for someone to interrupt them with a smidge of common sense.by AlexAplin
- What did that even do. Generate imaginary buildings and structures?
I am almost sure this was something for a performance or promotion: “Used AI effectively to…”
by rdtsc - Some examples in the Ars Technica article include "refugees near the Mexican border", "a giant golden statue of President Donald Trump looming over the White House", and "a hospital with a bomb crater in Gaza". https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/07/google-earth-releases-swi...by smallerize
- Oh nothing serious
just traffic accident https://cdn.xcancel.com/video/9829FB6B34807/https%3A%2F%2Fvi...
refugees on the streets https://cdn.xcancel.com/video/7631603BD54FB/https%3A%2F%2Fvi...
a bomb crater near a hospital in Gaza https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HOgBJEcWQAA--zV?format=jpg&name=...
a nuclear power plant in Iran https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HOgBP-OXAAATHWQ?format=jpg&name=...
a plane hitting the One World Trade Center https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HOoW-0HWIAAdl0y?format=jpg&name=...
the Eiffel tower collapsed https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HOoW-z0XkAAN0KI?format=jpg&name=...
an army base in the Amazons https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HOgmohwWEAEn3gq?format=jpg&name=...
by haunter - by inigyou
- Here is the original blog post, in case anyone is curious about the 'good path' https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/earth/na...
> Ex: Help students visualize the past instead of just reading about it. Teachers can show their classroom a historic site and type, “Render a hyper-realistic view of what these Pompeii ruins looked like in 78 A.D.” The modern-day ruins will instantly transform into a bustling, colorful street scene from the Roman Empire.
by angrydev - This is all so fucking stupid.by coldpie
- There are a metric boatload of these visualizations created to accompany history texts etc.
AI for image generation is great but I’m struggling to figure out why you would ever use this if it’s confined to satellite imagery.
by ofjcihen - There seem to be very few adults in the room at Google as of the past few years. This also happened with Bard's (remember when they thought Bard was a good name?) racist image generator. Does nobody do QA, UAT, or UX testing anymore?
- What red flags would the name "Bard" have raised for you if you were on that team?
- Making bad mistakes is childish? Or correcting them?by jstummbillig
- what’s wrong with the name Bard?by binary132
- Google’s culture seems so different from Apple’s which sometimes comes across as overly mature… which I personally prefer though!by baxtr
- Google has always been a technology company, never a product company. It’s very deep in their DNA.
- It's a pattern much wider than Google or event technology sector. It's very apparent in AI craze trough society, public governance sector, journalism etc. For people like me (growing up in seventies) it seems that there is teenagers everywhere and nobody is responsible for anything any more.by obscurette
- Do you get promoted for not launching a product? The interests of the individual and the institution do not always perfectly align.by threatripper
- I got Bard to execute a fork bomb, I think, when it was first launched. I noticed that it was evaluating the flow of a shell script incorrectly and it allowed execution, then refused to respond for 20 or 30 minutes.
Now, for some users, sharing a YouTube link adds some sort of tracking which then asks people who open the link to be "friends" with the person who shared it. Who thinks that this is a good idea, and why isn't it opt-in?
It's hard to take Google seriously these days.
by fullstop