Google has expanded its Gemini app with a new ‘nano banana’ image editing model from its DeepMind division, aiming to make AI-assisted edits more natural and consistent. The update builds on earlier editing tools launched this year and is now available to users.
One of the main improvements is likeness preservation. In past versions, images of people could come out looking slightly altered, even when only small changes were requested. The new system focuses on maintaining a person’s or pet’s appearance across multiple edits, whether the user is adding a new hairstyle, changing outfits, or placing someone in a different setting.
Google says this approach avoids the “close but not quite” problem that has made many AI photo edits feel unrealistic. So in other words it should be much better than before.
The tool also supports blending multiple photos into one scene. For example, a person can merge a picture of themselves with a photo of their dog to create a joint portrait. Multi-step editing is another addition, allowing users to adjust specific details while keeping the rest of the image unchanged.
A person could take an empty room, recolour the walls, and then add furniture piece by piece. The system also makes it possible to apply styles and textures from one photo to another object, such as transferring the colours of a flower to a pair of boots.
Users can upload finished images back into Gemini to generate short videos, expanding creative options beyond still pictures. To address concerns about authenticity, every image edited in the app includes both a visible watermark and Google’s SynthID invisible watermark, which identifies it as AI-generated. You can see the logo in the bottom right corner.
We’ve seen xAI push its Grok Imagine image creation feature hard, while ChatGPT’s image creation was also recently improved. Now Google has responded with this incredibly good update to Gemini. Never believe anything on the internet anymore, folks.
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