In a move set to revolutionize how we observe and understand our planet, Google DeepMind has unveiled a groundbreaking artificial intelligence tool dubbed AlphaEarth Foundations. This new AI model isn't a physical satellite but a system designed to make satellites themselves less indispensable, functioning as a "virtual satellite."
At its core, AlphaEarth Foundations integrates petabytes of Earth observation data from dozens of sources—including optical and radar satellites, 3D lidar mapping, and climate models—into a unified digital representation. The system condenses these massive datasets into uniform, easy-to-use summaries that describe the planet in 10-by-10-meter squares. The result is a digital Earth twin that is compact enough for large-scale analysis yet rich enough to track changes in land use, vegetation health, and coastal dynamics.
One of the model's key advantages is its efficiency. Its summaries, known as "embeddings," require 16 times less storage space than those from other AI systems, dramatically reducing the cost of planetary-scale analysis. In head-to-head testing, AlphaEarth Foundations was consistently the most accurate, demonstrating a 24% lower error rate than other leading AI mapping models.
The practical applications are already impressive. In Ecuador, the model can "see through persistent cloud cover" to detail agricultural plots. In Antarctica, a notoriously difficult area to image, it maps complex surfaces in clear detail. In Canada, it exposed subtle agricultural land-use changes invisible to conventional satellite imaging.
To accelerate research, Google is releasing a collection of AlphaEarth Foundations' annual embeddings as the Satellite Embedding dataset in Google Earth Engine. This dataset, with over 1.4 trillion embedding footprints per year, is already being used by more than 50 organizations, including the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization and Harvard University, to create powerful custom maps. AlphaEarth Foundations is part of the broader Google Earth AI initiative, which aims to address critical global needs.