Generative AI + Earth Observation Scans

I especially like the demos of Generative AI on a vector model of their daily whole-earth scans. They can give single-shot queries to find similar images — like all nuclear missile silos in China over time, or the trajectory of all of their balloons from launch origin, or novel aircraft not seen before.

Here is Robert Cardillo, former NGA Director, shared the estimate that these AI models allow him to do “detection as a service,” at a level that would have taken 10 million human analysts before AI + daily planet scans.

The same model can see every act of deforestation as it is happening. Planet will soon launch a global forest carbon tracker to measure carbon offsets and supply chain connections to deforestation (as will be required in the EU starting 2025; to meet EUDR, 1.2 million companies will need to track their supply chain in a way that can only be done by satellite, at an annual compliance cost of $5.6B/year).