SatMagazine’s latest Blake Brief article, “AI and Earth Observation: A New Lens on Our Planet,” examines how artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing Earth Observation (EO)—the gathering and analysis of data about the Earth’s physical, chemical, and biological systems—by enhancing data processing capabilities, improving analysis accuracy, and enabling real-time insights. Author attorneys Curt Blake and Stefan Geirhofer highlight three areas at the intersection of AI and EO:
- the use of AI for object detection in satellite imagery;
- the development of foundation models permitting researchers to build custom applications without the need for training AI models from scratch; and
- autonomous AI-powered detection in orbit to reduce the volume of data that needs to be transferred to Earth.
The integration of AI in EO raises important legal considerations that stakeholders must navigate carefully. Key issues include data ownership and intellectual property rights, particularly with respect to the vast amounts of satellite imagery and the models developed from this data. Stakeholders should analyze carefully who owns data used in their systems and any applicable license rights and restrictions. The use of AI in EO also raises issues relating to data leakage and model hallucination.
Read the full article here.
