⁠I tried Google's new Nano Banana 🍌 AI Image Generator. It's...INSANE

EDITOR’S NOTE

Hello Nanobits Readers,

Last week, when I was busy exploring London for a work trip, my phone was buzzing with notifications on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Everyone was losing their minds over something called "Nano Banana." (like what!? a banana 🍌). My feed was flooded with people turning themselves into action figures, placing their pets in impossible scenarios, and creating images that looked too good to be AI-generated. The FOMO hit hard.

For 2 weeks, I watched from the sidelines as people shared increasingly creative use cases while I was busy with customer meetings and exploring a new place. The moment I landed back home, I went straight to my laptop and opened Google Gemini. What happened next left me genuinely speechless.

That was a few days back, and I haven't stopped experimenting since. Every morning, I wake up with a new idea to test: "Can it turn my coffee mug into a spaceship? What if I combine three random photos into one scene?" Nano Banana doesn't just generate images; it's rewired how I think about visual creativity entirely.

This week, I'm sharing my hands-on experiments with Google's Nano Banana and showing you exactly what makes this AI image tool so special that it knocked ChatGPT off the App Store throne.

GOOGLE’S NANO BANANA

Google released an updated image generation and editing AI model, Gemini 2.5 Flash Image, also known as Nano Banana, this month. The Nano Banana craze refers to a viral AI‐image feature in Google Gemini (also seen via Google AI Studio) that lets users transform photos into ultra‑realistic 3D figurines.

Nano Banana is Google's state-of-the-art image generation and editing model that operates through natural conversation. You can prompt Gemini with text, images, or a combination of both, allowing you to create, edit, and iterate on visuals with unprecedented control.

The model excels at 3 core functions: generating high-quality images from text descriptions, editing existing images through natural language commands, and composing new scenes by combining multiple input images. One of the marquee capabilities is character consistency: you can ask the model to reuse the same subject (a person, pet, mascot, or product) across many edits or new scenes while preserving identifying visual features (face/shape, color palette, distinguishing marks).

This model is available via the Gemini API and Google AI Studio for developers and Vertex AI for enterprise. It's priced at $30 per 1 million output tokens, making it accessible for both casual users through the Gemini app and businesses looking to integrate AI image generation into their workflows.

What sets Nano Banana apart from competitors like DALL-E or Midjourney is its conversational approach to image editing. Gemini lets you combine photos to put yourself in a picture with your pet, change the background of a room to preview new wallpaper, or place yourself anywhere in the world you can imagine, all while keeping you, you.

MY EXPERIMENTS WITH NANO BANANA

I honestly lost count of how many different use cases I tested over the week, from turning childhood drawings into photorealistic images to creating movie poster mockups and even generating behind-the-scenes shots from final film scenes. But for the sake of keeping this newsletter readable, I am sharing the seven experiments that had the biggest "wow factor" and clear business applications.

Professional Product Photography & E-Commerce

I started by testing Nano Banana's ability to transform amateur product shots into professional-grade images. Taking a rough photo of a coffee mug on a table, I used this prompt: "Transform this product photo into a high-quality studio-style image. Use soft, balanced lighting. Remove any background distractions. Apply subtle color correction and give it a clean, modern look suitable for an e-commerce catalog."

The results were stunning. Nano Banana maintained the product's proportions, color, and texture while creating what looked like a professional studio photograph. I even tested it on my Coach handbag with almost the same prompt, and it produced a polished product shot while preserving the authentic appearance.

Use Cases: Beyond basic product photography, Nano Banana opens up possibilities for online retailers: creating lifestyle shots by placing products in different environments ("Show this watch on a businessman's wrist in a modern office"), generating size comparison images ("Place this phone next to a coffee cup and car keys for scale"), creating seasonal variations ("Show this jacket in a cozy winter cabin setting"), and even producing 360-degree product mockups from a single angle.

Scaling impact: What previously required hiring photographers, models, and location scouts can now be accomplished with simple text prompts, making professional-quality product imagery accessible to small businesses and individual sellers.

Character Consistency & Personal Branding

This feature genuinely impressed me the most. I uploaded a single photo of myself and asked Nano Banana to place me in different professional contexts: "Make it look like I'm in a professional podcast studio from a different angle,” “Make it look like I'm sitting in a Hindu pooja ceremony.”

Each image maintained (almost) perfect facial consistency while completely transforming the environment. This opens incredible possibilities for content creators who need contextual imagery without expensive photoshoots.

Use cases: LinkedIn posts, YouTube thumbnails, course marketing materials, speaking engagement promotions

Hyper Personalized Branding

I tested Nano Banana's ability to create personalized sales materials by "prompt chaining,” giving it multiple sequential instructions. Starting with a photo of me sitting in a hostel mess with a food plate in front of me, I asked it to: 1) Remove the plate from this picture, 2) Change the glass to a Starbucks take-away coffee mug, 3) Change the background to a Starbucks cafe.

The result was a completely personalized image, showing me in a Starbucks setting, which is perfect for relationship-building in B2B sales.

Additional Personalization Applications: Beyond coffee shop scenarios, this technique works for countless sales situations: creating images of yourself at industry conferences ("Place me at the AWS re:Invent conference with branded signage"), showing product demonstrations in client-specific environments ("Show me presenting our software solution in a Goldman Sachs boardroom"), or even cultural personalization ("Place me enjoying lunch at a traditional Japanese restaurant" for Tokyo-based prospects).

Pro tip: The key is starting with clean, well-lit photos where you can easily isolate and modify background elements. This makes the AI's job easier and results more realistic.

Marketing Assets & Social Media Ads

Using Nano Banana, I was able to generate multiple variations of social media ads instantly. I uploaded a Domino’s ad featuring pizzas, then created three variations with different food types using prompts like "Swap the pizza with cheesy garlic bread,” “Replace the garlic bread with choco lava cake,” “Replace the choco lava cake with chicken wings.”

Within seconds, I had three distinct ad variations, each maintaining the original layout, brand logo, and messaging while showcasing different food categories. The AI even added realistic details, like steam effects on the food.

Business impact: This could scale to generate dozens of ad variations for A/B testing in minutes rather than hours of design work.

Interior Design & Space Visualization

I wanted to test Nano Banana's ability to help visualize home improvements without expensive consultations. I uploaded a photo of my living room and asked it to furnish the room with my specifications. The AI didn't just add the furniture I asked for; it also enhanced it with additional features, like a standing lamp that blended seamlessly with the overall setting.

Business applications: Interior designers can instantly show clients multiple design options, furniture retailers can demonstrate how pieces look in customers' actual rooms, and real estate agents can help buyers visualize the renovation potential before purchase. This eliminates the traditional barriers of expensive 3D rendering software or physical room staging, making professional interior visualization accessible to anyone through simple conversation.

Prompt template: "Furnish the room with furniture with a minimalist Scandinavian setup, including a light wood coffee table and cream-colored sofa."

Professional Team Standardization

For HR and company branding purposes, I uploaded a photo of myself and asked AI to transform the image to match a consistent professional studio aesthetic with neutral backgrounds.

Prompt used: "Transform into a professional headshot with the face looking in the front, light neutral background, consistent lighting, and studio-quality presentation, and put a Google logo in the background."

This solves the common remote team challenge of maintaining visual consistency across company websites and marketing materials.

Building Custom Image Apps with Google AI Studio

Beyond individual experiments, I discovered Nano Banana's most powerful feature: creating custom apps through Google AI Studio (studio.google.com) that can handle recurring image tasks at scale. Instead of manually prompting each time, I built dedicated apps for different business functions.

I created a "Studio Shot AI" that could take any image and convert it into a product for the e-commerce platform. Within a couple of minutes, I had the app ready, and I could feed in the images to get the desired output.

Prompt used: Create an app that uses Gemini 2.5 Flash image to take one or more uploaded product images and transform each product photo into a high-quality studio-style image. Use soft, balanced lighting, and remove any background distractions, apply subtle color correction, and give it a clean modern look suitable for an ecommerce catalog. Keep the products’ shape, texture, and colors true to life.

Business impact: These custom apps eliminate repetitive design work, allowing teams to focus on strategy while AI handles execution. Once built, they can process dozens of images simultaneously, turning hours of manual work into minutes of automated generation.

Before we move on, here are some additional use cases I tested that are worth exploring:

• Creating coloring pages from any image (amazing for kids’ play)

• Transforming printed figure sketches into realistic scenes

• Generating isometric building views from regular photos (great for architects)

• Colorizing black and white historical images (to give color to the nostalgia)

• Creating website mockups and business card designs (for your professional use)

Each of these opens up entirely new creative and business possibilities that would have been impossible or expensive just months ago.

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY

The Good: The image quality is genuinely impressive, often indistinguishable from professional photography or digital art. The character consistency feature works remarkably well, maintaining recognizable features across different contexts. The conversational interface makes complex image editing accessible to non-technical users. Processing speed is surprisingly fast, with most images generating in under 30 seconds (thanks to Google's optimized "Flash" architecture designed specifically for rapid inference). The tool excels at object removal, background replacement, and style transfers with remarkable accuracy.

The Bad: Text manipulation remains inconsistent; sometimes it nails text changes perfectly, other times it struggles with basic text overlay requests. The tool occasionally misinterprets complex prompts, especially when combining multiple editing instructions. Output resolution isn't always consistent, and some images come out smaller than expected for professional use. Quality can degrade when extending headshots to full-body images, often requiring additional upscaling tools. Additionally, although the tool handles English and Chinese prompts effectively, support for other languages remains inconsistent.

The Ugly: Like all AI image generators, Nano Banana raises questions about creative ownership and the potential displacement of human artists and photographers. The ease of creating realistic-looking images also raises concerns about deepfakes and the spread of misinformation. The popularity has spawned numerous fake websites and unofficial apps mimicking Gemini's platform, creating additional security risks for unsuspecting users.

Some users have also reported disturbing instances where Nano Banana generated images showing personal details (like moles or birthmarks) that weren't visible in the uploaded photos.

Experts warn that uploaded images may be used for model training, analytics, and improvement purposes unless users disable specific settings. Even when Google claims images aren't permanently stored, the potential for data misuse during processing periods remains concerning.

Despite viral social media claims suggesting Nano Banana would "obliterate Adobe" and make "Photoshop obsolete," testing reveals it's "not a game changer" and requires significant human oversight for quality assurance. Most generated images need additional corrections for professional use.

The tool represents a solid incremental improvement in AI image editing. Still, it falls short of revolutionary claims, while introducing concerning privacy implications that users should carefully consider before uploading personal photos.

END NOTE

All things said and done, from my perspective, Nano Banana is not replacing human creativity, but rather amplifying it. It removes technical barriers and lets ideas flow directly from imagination to visual reality. Whether you are a business owner who needs product mockups, a content creator who wants consistent character designs, or someone who just wants to see their dog as an astronaut, Nano Banana makes it possible.

The tool is still imperfect, sometimes frustrating, and occasionally unpredictable. But it's also magical in the way it transforms abstract ideas into concrete visuals through simple conversation. In a world where visual content drives engagement, having an AI assistant that can create, edit, and iterate on images through natural language feels like having superpowers.

The question isn't whether AI image generation will become mainstream; Nano Banana's viral success proves it already has. The real question is how quickly we will adapt to a world where any idea can become a visual reality with just a few words of conversation.

Until then, keep experimenting.