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illuminem summarises for you the essential news of the day. Read the full piece on Wired or enjoy below:
🗞️ Driving the news: Google Earth has launched a new AI-powered chatbot feature that allows users to interactively explore climate change impacts by asking natural language questions
• The tool enables users to query geographic and environmental data—such as sea-level rise, deforestation, or urban heat islands—across time and location. It marks a major step toward making satellite imagery and environmental data more accessible to the public, policymakers, and researchers.
🔭 The context: Google Earth has long served as a digital mapping tool, but its functionality has primarily been limited to visualization
• The integration of generative AI—trained on geospatial data and historical imagery—transforms the platform into a more analytical and predictive system
• The move aligns with Google’s broader push to embed AI into its ecosystem and supports growing global demand for data-driven climate intelligence
🌍 Why it matters for the planet: Empowering users to easily access and interpret climate data enhances transparency and informed decision-making
• The AI chatbot could help communities identify environmental risks, support adaptation strategies, and monitor policy effectiveness in real time
• As climate-related disasters become more frequent, tools like this offer scalable potential for climate resilience, especially for vulnerable regions with limited technical capacity
⏭️ What's next: Google aims to expand the tool’s predictive capabilities to model future scenarios, such as forecasting disaster risks or identifying at-risk populations
• It may also integrate with global sustainability reporting platforms and city planning tools
• As the system evolves, it could become a key resource for climate researchers, educators, and civil society actors advocating for climate justice and resilience planning
💬 One quote: “This makes climate data intuitive and actionable for everyone—not just scientists,” said Rebecca Moore, Director of Google Earth, Earth Engine, and Outreach
📈 One stat: Google Earth’s AI chatbot draws on more than 50 years of satellite imagery and petabytes of climate and land-use data, enabling deep insights into environmental trends
See on illuminem's Data Hub™ the sustainability performance of Google and its peers like Microsoft, Amazon, and IBM
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