About
To analyze satellite imagery, draw conclusions and take adequate actions, bare human eyes alone are not enough. Especially when processing large amounts of data (daily terabytes from satellites). To navigate this complexity, Artificial intelligence brings automation and comes in handy to read images at scale and to quickly extract actionable insights. Fully aware of this, and eager to harness artificial intelligence advances for enhanced Earth Observation, Airbus has been proactively developing in-house cutting-edge and bespoke algorithms to address today’s challenges. In brittle times, the multiplication of conflicts and the specter of regional-to-global war expansion have all reinforced the importance of battlefield transparency and tactical intelligence, emphasizing the relevance of Satellite Imagery for Multi-Domain Operations. While ISR teams face difficulties in interpreting satellite imagery to support timely decision-making in high-intensity conflicts, Defence forces have recognized AI as a key enabler to scale up production and to automate the analysis of large-scale multi-source satellite imagery and quickly extract key information for their operations. AI also powers and helps scale up analytics for Environment monitoring: better performance, faster development, tailoring to customers’ needs… Overall it can help identify critical evolutions over time throughout different biomes: deforestation is put under control, vast land cover mapping is performed to detect changes in vegetation and urban expansion, drought conditions are studied, and emission levels can be tracked. AI becomes crucial as climate change and its impacts build up and accelerate, supporting the need for near-real-time applications, anticipation and fast responsiveness. Nowadays, in the wake of the two first AI waves (machine learning and statistical, followed by deep learning and big data) comes a new AI era, heading towards General AI, marked by the generative AI disruption. Indeed, Geospatial companies like us Airbus, with our high quality imagery foresee it as the catalyst for a paradigm shift and a game-changer for Earth Observation, shifting to Earth Exploration, advocating for its democratization and making it accessible for broad communities of end-users, thanks to lower barriers to entry. Imagine, with no technical background needed, asking -in natural language- to look for whatever pattern you have in mind: “find red cars parked along the roadside in a forest”: simple, fast and intuitive, such as starting a conversation with an overhead image, and make them speak to tell their own stories. The whole world, just one prompt away. In a nutshell, AI and genAI’s core technologies (LLM, FM…) can be leveraged for many usages and benefits: to enhance the resolution and visual rendering of satellite imagery such as our Pléiades Neo HD15 images, for quick and scalable mapping, IMINT and analytics solutions, either for Defence or Commercial applications. They should considerably improve the quality of insights derived from satellite data for decision-making. Above all, Airbus values trustworthy and reliable Imagery & Artificial Intelligence to make Earth Observation smarter, more intuitive and accessible for all. For Airbus it is important to highlight that GenAI technologies are never used to generate new content and alter reality. Not forgetting that AI is never the end, but only a mighty catalyst to open a new Geospatial chapter, and to see the world with a fresh new A-EYE!

