Nano Banana—officially known as Gemini 2.5 Flash Image—is a generative artificial intelligence model designed for advanced image generation and editing. Developed by Google DeepMind, a subsidiary of Google, Nano Banana is part of the Gemini family of large language models.
Launched in August 2025 as a feature within the Gemini chatbot and other Google products, Nano Banana quickly gained widespread attention online. Its popularity surged due to its highly photorealistic outputs, especially the now-famous “3D figurine” images, which went viral across social media platforms.
From Codename to Public Release
Nano Banana was initially a codename used during secret public testing. It first appeared anonymously on the crowd-sourced AI evaluation platform LMArena on August 12, 2025. At that time, users were unaware of its origins, but its output quality quickly stood out.
On August 26, 2025, the model was officially released to the public through the Gemini app and related Google AI services. Shortly afterward, Google confirmed that the mysterious “Nano Banana” was in fact Gemini 2.5 Flash Image. The nickname, originating from internal placeholder naming, had already spread across online communities and became firmly associated with the model.
Building on this momentum, DeepMind released Nano Banana Pro—officially Gemini 3 Pro Image—on November 20, 2025. This upgraded version introduced improved text rendering and stronger world knowledge, expanding its creative and contextual capabilities.
Key Features of Nano Banana AI
Nano Banana AI is designed to make image editing intuitive and expressive through natural language prompts. Users can modify hairstyles, backdrops, and visual elements simply by describing what they want to see.
One of its defining strengths is subject consistency, allowing the same person or object to remain recognizable across multiple edits. This makes iterative image refinement far more reliable than earlier AI image tools.
The model also supports multi-image fusion, seamlessly combining multiple photographs into a single coherent output. Its built-in world knowledge enables context-aware changes, ensuring edits make sense within real-world settings.
Another important feature is SynthID watermarking, an invisible digital signature embedded in generated images. This watermark helps identify AI-generated content without altering the visual appearance of the image.
Launch, Adoption, and Growth
Following its public release, Nano Banana became available across multiple platforms, including the Gemini app, Google AI Studio, and Vertex AI. According to Google, the model played a major role in attracting over 10 million new users to the Gemini app and enabled more than 200 million image edits within just weeks of launch.
This rapid adoption highlighted the strong demand for accessible, high-quality AI image generation tools.
Cultural Impact and Viral Popularity
Nano Banana’s biggest cultural moment came from a viral trend where users transformed their selfies into toy-like 3D figurines. These images spread rapidly across platforms such as Instagram and X (formerly Twitter), turning Nano Banana into an internet phenomenon.
Its integration with X further amplified its reach. Users could tag Nano Banana directly in posts to generate images from prompts, making AI image creation a visible and social experience.
Critical Reception
Media reviews in late 2025 reflected a generally positive response. A TechRadar review noted that Nano Banana delivered more realistic and consistent results across multiple prompts compared to ChatGPT’s image generation at the time. Tom’s Guide praised its ability to handle creative and lively edits.
However, some limitations were also highlighted. PC Gamer pointed out the absence of basic editing tools such as cropping and noted occasional issues where requested changes were not applied and the image reverted to its original state.
Despite these drawbacks, Nano Banana demonstrated strong performance in specialized areas like architectural visualization, producing imagery at accurate scales even with complex geometric designs.
Nano Banana Pro and the Gemini Ecosystem
With the release of Nano Banana Pro, Google further strengthened its position in AI-driven visual creation. The Pro version enhanced text accuracy and contextual understanding, making it more suitable for professional and detailed image workflows.
Together, Nano Banana Gemini, Nano Banana AI, and Nano Banana Pro represent a significant evolution in generative image technology—blending creativity, realism, and usability within the broader Gemini ecosystem.
