Google on Thursday unveiled a successor to its viral Nano Banana imaging model, touting faster performance as the search engine giant tries to attract more users to its artificial intelligence tools.
The model, called Nano Banana 2, is rolling out to all products, including the Gemini app, the AI Mode and Lens features in Search, and Flow, its AI-powered video tool, the Alphabet-owned company said.
The launch is the latest in a series of moves by Google that have propelled the company to the forefront of the AI race, helping it better compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT after initially suffering a series of embarrassments. The success has fueled a 47% rise in its shares over the past six months.
Google launched the Nano Banana AI image editor in August, which quickly became a viral sensation and attracted 13 million new users to the Gemini app in just four days in September. By mid-October, it had generated more than 5 billion images.
The tech giant followed this up with the launch of the updated Nano Banana Pro in November.
Nano Banana 2 is based on Gemini’s faster, cheaper models known as Flash, which enable faster image generation and editing, Google said, adding that it also has better instruction-following capabilities and offers sharper details.
In November, Google launched its Gemini 3 AI model, the success of which led rival OpenAI to issue an internal “code red” to prompt teams to accelerate development.
Gemini 3 has significantly increased user engagement, helping the Gemini app capture more than 750 million monthly active users as of the end of December.
