Gemini's Nano Banana Editor Sees Surging User Adoption

Google Gemini is stepping out from the shadow of ChatGPT, largely thanks to its Nano Banana image editor and the popular trend of creating lifelike AI-generated figurines.

Google introduced Nano Banana at the end of August, promoting it as a tool to “transform images in remarkable new ways” directly inside the Gemini app. To create the “perfect picture,” you simply upload an image into Gemini and “describe what you want to change,” as the company explained. Google’s recommendations include giving your home a makeover, styling your hair in a ‘60s beehive, dressing your chihuahua in a tutu, or previewing how you might look with more wrinkles in a decade. You can even blend different photos and generate a “fun video” of your imagined scenario by re-submitting the edited image to Gemini.

On X, Josh Woodward, Google Labs vice president and head of Gemini, shared that the Gemini app had gained 23 million new users in the two weeks following the editor’s debut. Over the same period, he reported that 500 million images had been transformed using the tool.

This rapid growth has helped Gemini climb to the top of app store rankings worldwide. As of this writing, Gemini is the number one iPhone app on Apple’s App Store in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, France, Australia, Germany, and Italy. In many of these countries, it overtook OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which is now ranked second.

On September 11, Woodward noted that “India has discovered” the image editor and later announced that Google would need to impose “temporary usage limits” to handle overwhelming demand. He described the response as a “full-on stampede” and credited the Gemini team for performing “heroics” to maintain system stability.

What’s behind the surge in popularity? While a range of editing options have gained traction, the standout feature of Nano Banana lets users turn themselves—or their pets—into 3D figurines. You only need to upload a photo into Gemini and enter a detailed prompt to receive a miniature doll version of yourself, posed on a desktop. The figurine often arrives with a display box and is set against a computer screen showing a wireframe model supposedly used in its creation. Though the required prompt is detailed, copy-and-paste versions have been widely shared online. Google has even supplied its own example prompts to fuel the trend.

After experimenting with Nano Banana, it’s not hard to see why Google is having a viral AI moment. The image editor is straightforward and convenient to use within the Gemini app. It’s also fast, avoiding the long wait times that have made other tools like ChatGPT less appealing. That said, it’s not without its flaws. Similar to other image apps, the output doesn’t always match expectations, and Gemini occasionally disregards instructions entirely, returning the original image unaltered.

Despite these hiccups, one feature of Nano Banana impressed me enough to believe it deserves the attention—and will likely inspire more viral trends until a new model comes along: the images it produces still look like me. While many AI editors tend to alter facial features and produce unsettling replicas, Google’s Nano Banana quickly generated a cute desktop doll that remained unmistakably recognizable as myself.