Geo-Foundation Models: Reality, Gaps and Opportunities

Yiqun Xie, Zhaonan Wang, Gengchen Mai, Yanhua Li, Xiaowei Jia, Song Gao, Shaowen Wang

Abstract: With the recent rapid advances of revolutionary AI models such as ChatGPT, foundation models have become a main topic for the discussion of future AI. Despite the excitement, the success is still limited to specific types of tasks. Particularly, ChatGPT and similar foundation models have unique characteristics that are difficult to replicate for most geospatial tasks. This paper envisions several major challenges and opportunities in the creation of geospatial foundation (geo-foundation) models, as well as potential future adoption scenarios. We also expect that a major success story is necessary for geo-foundation models to take off in the long term.