Elissa Welle is a NYC-based AI reporter and is currently supported by the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism. She covers AI companies, policies, and products.

Google is expanding its AI features within Google Earth. It’s now easier to chat with Google Earth AI models, introduced in July, to identify infrastructure vulnerable to an oncoming storm, for example, or spot communities at risk of dust storms during a drought.

Google Earth now uses Gemini to connect various Earth AI models — such as weather forecasts, satellite imagery, and population maps — when providing an answer to a user’s chat query. This is an expansion of Google’s geospatial reasoning framework which is available to those in Google’s trusted testers program. Testers can also now combine their own data with Google’s Earth AI models on imagery, population, and the environment.

Google says the integrated chat, which it began piloting last year, helps users find objects and patterns in satellite imagery. As an example, the company says users could have Google Earth monitor drinking water supplies by asking it to “find algae blooms.” Google AI Pro and Ultra users in the US will be able to access this Gemini chat feature in Google Earth with higher, but yet unspecified, limits. In the coming weeks, Google is opening up access to Earth AI models with Gemini capabilities to US users with professional or professional advanced plans of Google Earth.

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• Elissa Welle