Google Earth Gets an AI Chatbot to Help Chart the Climate Crisis

New AI features in Google Earth let users ask chatbot-style questions to find changes in the climate. The system could eventually predict disasters and identify the communities likely to be affected.

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 wrought by their destruction. 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 ...