Google’s latest AI experiment just graduated from inside joke to mass phenomenon. The model that leaked under the name Nano Banana has been officially live in the Gemini app as Gemini 2.5 Flash Image for just over a week — and the numbers show just how quickly it’s taken off.
Let’s be honest: Nano Banana > Flash Image
In a post on X, Josh Woodward, VP of Google Labs, revealed that more than 200 million images have already been edited with the tool, with over 10 million people trying Gemini for the first time since its release. That kind of growth is rare even by Google’s standards. Woodward’s post summed up the scale excitedly: “TPUs red hot, SRE pagers howling.”
The hype didn’t come out of nowhere. For weeks, Nano Banana had been circulating online as the mysterious editor that somehow avoided the uncanny valley problem plaguing other AI image apps. Where competitors stumble on repeated tweaks, running into trouble like warped faces or decreasing likeness, Nano Banana nails consistency. You can repaint your living room three times over, stick your chihuahua in a tutu, or swap yourself into a matador costume, and the model still keeps you recognizably you.
That “stickiness of self” is what turned a silly code name into a viral sensation, topping LMArena’s editing benchmarks before Google even admitted ownership. Now that it’s rebranded as Gemini 2.5 Flash Image, Google is positioning it as a clear differentiator in the crowded AI editing market.
Access is tiered: free Gemini users get 100 edits per day, while paying subscribers can push to 1,000 edits. Every output carries Google’s SynthID watermarking, visible and invisible, to flag AI content.
The simple strategy paid off. Hook people with a model that feels like magic, then pull them deeper into Gemini. And so far, it’s working. Most AI editors make for cool demos, but Nano Banana has crossed into real usability. As we’re starting to see, Google didn’t just ship another toy. With Gemini 2.5 Flash Image, it may have found the rare AI feature that people actually want to use every day.
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