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Synthetic terrain photography was one of the example applications for the original Image Analogies project (https://mrl.cs.nyu.edu/projects/image-analogies/flightsim.ht...) 20 years ago in 2001.

But this article is making a huge mountain out of a tiny molehill. None of the alleged attack scenarios seem particularly plausible or serious. And...like...yeah...photos can be faked. Hello literally the entire history of photography.

The linked publication says things things like "geospatial data has become such a fundamental resource for everyday life such as in real-time traffic provided by Google Maps". Ok...but so what? Guilt by implication from an incomplete syllogism, I guess? Are we supposed to suddenly develop a fear that Google Maps is going to start maliciously sending drivers over cliffs? This rhetorical sleaze was fine for Aristotle but has no place in journal articles.

The Verge writer says "Deepfake geography might even be a national security issue, as geopolitical adversaries use fake satellite imagery to mislead foes". What military sea slug is using unverified satellite images provided by an adversary instead of their own?

I agree. The problem of deepfakes is non-existing for satellite imagery as all providers are known and trusted. Not exactly the same as a random image from the internet