New updates and more access to Google Earth AI
21 comments
·October 23, 2025chrisshroba
tencentshill
Could be a nice expensive contractor option for replacing the NOAA's public data that we lost. But it probably wont be picked up because it has to study the climate, which is a bad word now.
CobrastanJorji
You can totally create a private version of NOAA so long as you keep the messaging about insurance intelligence and never, ever speculate out loud about the causes of hurricanes. And if that's not enough, just do what Meta did and hire some shmuck like Robby Starbuck to signal that you're on the right team.
moffkalast
> McGill and Partners
Hi, I'm Saul Goodman. Did you know that you have hurricanes? The constitution says you do! And so do AI.
apples_oranges
Haha yeah. Perhaps a marketing gimmick with an asterisk..
diogenico
It shifts from map layers to answer “what/where/why now?” rather than just “show me X.”
And the Gemini-in-Google Earth bit could lower the barrier for non-GIS folks.
polyomino
I have found that using LLMs to generate queries for Overpass (Open street map query language) works really well. Great alternative if you don't care to deal with corporate nonsense.
ecommerceguy
In 2001 we used Erdas Imagine to do this type of work. It required humans to train the software using heads-up digitizing. Dare I say machine learning on Pentium workstations?
edit, looks like they have ai too now. could be neat to play with after how long has it been. jeesh.
Jordan-117
I have some old screenshots of interesting locations from Google Earth circa 2006-2012 that I've never been able to track down. I wonder if something like this would be capable of geolocating them somehow -- like reverse image search for landscapes.
tom1337
Out of interest: have you already tried using GPT 5 (reasoning / thinking) for that? I've had quite some success in the past using them to track down such places.
Jordan-117
Yeah, that and Gemini 2.5. They actually were able to help identify a handful based on context clues, or at least narrow it down enough that I could find it myself. But there were three I couldn't crack -- even a forum dedicated to solving GE puzzles came up empty:
https://googleearthcommunity.proboards.com/thread/10731/ulti...
howenterprisey
Maybe Geoguessr players would be good at identifying them as well?
theletterf
First photo could be Namibia? 29°40'04"S 18°11'12"E
Mashimo
Mhh, don't we already have conventional ways of telling where a flodding might happen?
lacoolj
Once Zillow and Redfin start doing this, that will be game-changing
null
> Bellwether, a moonshot at Alphabet's X, is using Earth AI to provide hurricane predictions insights for global insurance broker McGill and Partners. This enables McGill's clients to pay claims faster so homeowners can start rebuilding sooner.
Hm, I'm quite skeptical about this claim.