Google Releases Nano-Banana Image Model

Nano Banana addresses one of the hardest problems that most image models continue to struggle with — character consistency.

Google released a brand new image editing model that gives users more control over photo edits inside Gemini. The official name of this new model is Gemini 2.5 Flash Image, but that name is boring. The nickname that leaked online a couple of weeks ago on LMArena is “nano-banana,” and I think it’s more fun and has some character. So yeah, I’m gonna call it Nano Banana for the rest of this article.

The update is live right now in the Gemini app for both paid and free users. You can change your outfit, move yourself into another background, or blend in a pet photo, and the model tries to keep the subject’s face as consistent as possible.

What is Nano Banana?

Nano-banana is Google DeepMind’s new image editing model that slipped onto the scene with a funny codename and suddenly became the top-rated editor on community leaderboards.

After the official announcement, nano-banana is now labeled as gemini-2.5-flash-image-preview (nano-banana) and is still at the top of the rank with a 1,362 score.

Gemini 2.5 Flash rank on LMArena. Image by Jim Clyde Monge

Looking at the average win rate against all other top image models, nano-banana has the highest score of 0.855.

Gemini 2.5 Flash average win rate on LMArena. Image by Jim Clyde Monge

Nano-banana isn’t just an image editor. It’s an image generator. But I’m going to focus on the image editor aspect in this post.

The big feature here is likeness preservation. No more getting six slightly different versions of yourself with random noses and inconsistent eyes. Pets and people look like themselves even after you start messing with locations, costumes, or props. That’s the selling point.

In terms of cost, through the API, an image costs about four cents to generate at 1024x1024 resolution. More details in the API access section.

How Nano-Banana Image Editor Works

Let me show you an example of how nano-banana works. First, find a good platform to try the image model. You can access it on Gemini, Google Vertex AI, Google AI Studio, or Flux Labs AI.

Let me show you an example using the image edit feature of Flux Labs AI powered by nano-banana. Head over to the Image Editor tool and set the model to Gemini 2.5 Flash.