What you need to know
- Google’s Gemini receives a major personalization upgrade this week, as the AI uses Personal Intelligence and Nano Banana 2.
- Now, users can tell the AI to generate a quirky photo of them and their family without being so long-winded.
- Depending on your simple prompt, Gemini will dive into your photos, history, video history, and more to create what it believes you’re seeking.
- Gemini’s personalized image creation is rolling out “over the next few days” for subscribed AI Pro, Plus, and Ultra users.
Gemini’s popular image generator, Nano Banana, is getting a huge, personal upgrade that’s all about recognizing who you and your family members are.
A press release teased the personal touch Gemini can give the images you want it to create using Nano Banana. To put it plainly, Google announced today (Apr 16) that Gemini’s Personal Intelligence can now leverage your memories stored in the Photos app and Nano Banana 2 to create AI reworks of you and your loved ones. Users can connect their Photos app to Personal Intelligence, so the AI can “use actual images of your loved ones to guide the image generation process.”
To get this done, Google says Gemini will lean heavily on the labels you’ve placed on your photos. This enables the AI to complete an image generation task without you needing to say too much. One example provided was, “Generate an image of me and my family doing our favourite activity.” While it might seem vague to an outside party, for Gemini (and your labeled photos), it should know exactly what you’re talking about.
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Android Central’s Take
I can see this being useful for parents and their kids. If they have this idea of seeing themselves as a princess or someone flying through space, parents can do that now. It’s just something quick and fun that’ll make them laugh. It’s not to be used in official terms by any means, but I don’t think that’s the point. The point here is to use your memories and put a fun, fantastical spin on it. In that case? I like it.
Moreover, users can get specific by telling Gemini to generate the image in a claymation style or with watercolors, as an oil painting, and more. We’ve been down this road before, as Google reminds users that Gemini—an AI—can make mistakes. What’s more, it might not even pick the right photos to use for its generation process.
If that happens, users can tap the plus icon to select a more appropriate photo. Google adds that it does not use your photos as training material for Gemini. This feature is also completely optional, meaning you don’t have to give Gemini access to your photos, nor do you have to engage with Personal Intelligence if you don’t want to.
Who you are pushes Gemini further
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This integration for Personal Intelligence and Nano Banana 2 goes beyond mixing you and your family into generated content. Google says that by looping in what Personal Intelligence knows about you—your tastes and lifestyle—it can create images from simple requests. If you were to tell Gemini to “design my dream house,” it would do its best by leveraging the information it knows about you. This might come from your YouTube history or even your most basic Google searches.
Android Central’s Take
Nano Banana really caught people’s attention when it debuted. It’s got a fun name to say, which might’ve driven its popularity, but it had its uses. Google said that one ability that users had it do was turn a prompt into a pretend statue. Now, that’s gone up with the inclusion of your memories, who you are, and more. This might bring some people back who were previously tired of writing long prompts over and over.
Gemini’s new image generation capabilities will begin rolling out “over the next few days” to eligible Google AI Pro, AI Plus, and AI Ultra subscribers in the U.S. The post teases that there are plans to bring this capability to desktop Chrome users and more “soon.”
Nano Banana was incredibly popular, but its second iteration took that several steps forward. Nano Banana 2 launched in February and quickly became the AI’s default image generator, replacing the first. This version is faster and much more precise when listening to the user’s request. What’s more, Nano Banana 2 now offers its generated content at 512px to 4K resolution across a selection of aspect ratios.
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