Overview
- The name came from Product Manager Naina Raisinghani combining her nicknames, proposed at 2:30 a.m. as a codename for public testing.
- The model’s technical designation was Gemini 2.5 Flash Image, but the public name stuck and now advances as Nano Banana Pro alongside Gemini 3 Pro Image.
- DeepMind used LMArena’s anonymous, crowd-sourced pairwise comparisons to gather unbiased real-world feedback before launch.
- Users praised the model’s ability to maintain likeness and handle complex multi-image edits, with social media traction accelerating adoption.
- Google says global day-one availability helped it become a top-rated image-editing product, as the team leaned into banana-themed UI touches and limited-edition swag.