Nano Banana can generate historical images from dates & GPS coordinates

AI shows you any moment in history—except one

Google’s AI image generator lets you time-travel—with just coordinates and a date, you can prompt a simulated view of any public place on Earth at any moment in history. But one event always fails to appear.

Nano Banana, Google’s AU image model, builds these visions from satellite maps, geotagged photos, EXIF data, and even real estate listings. You can generate close-up views of the world as it looked centuries ago.

It’ll generate the Titanic, Chernobyl, even the first US missiles in Iraq. Events both captured and uncaptured by cameras come to life.

But not Tiananmen Square.

Prompting “Show me close up of 39.9065° N, 116.3999° E on June 5, 1989” results in a blank screen.

AI is becoming our global memory. What it doesn’t show may shape what we believe. The victors once wrote history. Now it’s models with state-defined blind spots.

When AI becomes the storyteller, censorship becomes historiography.