A new AI model that can map the Earth in "unprecedented detail" will allow scientists to have a more precise and real-time view of our changing planet

The system combines huge amounts of observation data and could be used to track climate change and other environmental issues.

Launched by Google DeepMind, the search engine's AI research laboratory, AlphaEarth Foundations uses petabytes of Earth observation data to "accurately and efficiently" detail the entirety of the planet's terrestrial land and coastal waters, DeepMind said in a statement.

A petabyte is a unit of data storage that's equivalent to 1,000 terabytes (TB) or around a million gigabytes (GB)—or some 20,000 Blu-ray discs.

"This breakthrough enables scientists to do something that was impossible until now—create detailed,

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