Nano Banana

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Nano Banana (officially Gemini 2.5 Flash Image) is an artificial intelligence image generating and editing tool created by Google. "Nano Banana" was the codename used on LMArena while the model was undergoing pre-release testing, allowing the community to evaluate its performance on real-world prompts without knowing its identity. When the company publicly released it in August 2025, it was part of their Gemini line of AI products. The model became known for its editing skills and for starting a social media trend of styled "3D figurine" photos. [1]

Contents

History

Nano Banana first appeared publicly as an anonymous model on the crowd-sourced AI evaluation platform LMArena in early August of 2025. It was released publicly on August 26, 2025 through the Gemini app and related Google AI services. The nickname “Nano Banana” originated from internal placeholder naming but caught on quickly with the internet [2] when the codename started going around in online groups after discovery of it on LMArena. Google later confirmed its identity as Gemini 2.5 Flash Image in an official announcement upon public release. [1] [3]

Features

The model lets users change hairstyles, backdrops, and mix photos with natural language cues. Subject consistency allows the same person or item to be recognized across revisions.

Multi-image fusion joins photographs into one seamless output, and world knowledge allows context-aware changes. It also provides SynthID watermarking, which is an invisible digital signature in outputs to identify AI-generated information. [3] [4]

Launch and adoption

Following its release, Nano Banana was made available in the Gemini app, Google AI Studio, and through Vertex AI. According to Google, it helped attract over 10 million new users to the Gemini app and facilitated more than 200 million image edits within weeks of launch. [5] [6]

Cultural impact

People started to connect Nano Banana with a viral craze in which people turned their selfies into 3D figurines that looked like toys. The event circulated quickly on sites like Instagram and X (previously Twitter). [7] [8]

By adding the model to X, users could tag Nano Banana directly in posts to make photos from prompts, which made it even more popular. [7]

Reception

A September 2025 review in TechRadar compared Nano Banana's prompt engineering favorably to that of OpenAI’s ChatGPT-5. [9] A review in Tom's Guide praised its ability to handle creative and lively image edits. [10]

Another review in PC Gamer mentioned that the model didn’t have some basic editing tools like cropping, and that the product sometimes didn’t apply changes, but reverted back to the original image instead. [4]

Architectural visualization with this model seem to be strong and excellent at producing imagery at the correct scale even with complex geometry. [11]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 País, El (2025-08-29). "Google se vuelve viral con Nano Banana, su modelo más avanzado de edición de imágenes con IA". El País (in Spanish). Retrieved 2025-09-10.
  2. ↑ Langley, Hugh (2025-08-26). "Is Google behind a mysterious new AI image generator? These bananas might confirm it". Business Insider. Retrieved 2025-08-19.
  3. 1 2 "Image editing in Gemini just got a major upgrade". Google. 2025-08-26. Retrieved 2025-09-10.
  4. 1 2 Kinghorn, Jess (2025-08-28). "Gemini's 'Nano Banana' AI image editor can't crop a picture, but its penchant for deepfakes 'while keeping you, you' makes me want to wear a brown paper bag on my head forever more". PC Gamer. Retrieved 2025-09-10.
  5. ↑ Li, Abner (2025-09-04). "Nano Banana responsible for 10+ million first-time Gemini app users". 9to5Google. Retrieved 2025-09-10.
  6. ↑ "Google celebrates major achievements by its Gemini app 'Nano Banana' editor". Android Central. 2025-09-05. Retrieved 2025-09-10.
  7. 1 2 "Google's Nano Banana available on X: Here's how to use". The Economic Times. 2025-09-06. ISSN   0013-0389 . Retrieved 2025-09-10.
  8. ↑ "Nano Banana' trend: What is the viral 3D figurine craze, and how to create one for free". The Times of India. 2025-09-10. ISSN   0971-8257 . Retrieved 2025-09-10.
  9. ↑ "Gemini's Nano Banana makes photo editing fun again – and yes, it's better than ChatGPT". TechRadar. 2025-09-01. Retrieved 2025-09-10.
  10. ↑ Caswell, Amanda (2025-09-09). "Nano Banana just broke the internet with these viral trends — I tried these 5 prompts and I'm blown away". Tom's Guide. Retrieved 2025-09-10.
  11. ↑ Nelson, Michael (2025-09-11). "Nano-Banana and Architectural Visualization for Adaptive Reuse Projects". AMICO Architectural Metals. Retrieved 2025-09-11.
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