Crypto News: Peeling back Google’s “nano banana”

Using AI for photo editing or image generation has often been frustrating, at least in Austin Carr's experience. Today he writes about a new Google tool that's changing that. Plus: A major leap in space science might be blunted by US cuts to research funding, and Nike sees opportunity in WNBA shoe deals.

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For the past week, I've been nerding out over a new artificial intelligence model called "nano banana." The release began receiving raves for its wild image editing and generation capabilities, only for Google to reveal it was behind the mysterious launch. The company has since incorporated the model into its Gemini AI chatbot, and the photo quality and output speeds are pretty darn nuts—especially considering it's free to use.

It wasn't long ago that these kinds of photo services required expensive subscriptions or separate apps for, say, editing pictures with AI versus generating images from prompts. But access to such tools is quickly expanding, and Google in particular is stuffing Gemini with free universal features. Nicole Brichtova, image product lead for Google's AI research division DeepMind, says it's part of a big push to make sure Gemini can interact well with any type of media, be that text, photo, video or voice.

She says Google's goal for Gemini is "to be able to input any modality and output any modality—that's 100% where we're going."

It's a welcome shift from the fragmented experience that kicked off the AI era. It was annoying (and confusing) to have to navigate to Midjourney's Discord server in order to do text-to-image generations. I paid for, and inevitably canceled, subscriptions to several AI-enhanced editing apps from Adobe Inc. because the capabilities were so narrow and full of frustrating content restrictions. I've resisted buying Apple's latest $1,000 iPhone merely to get native AI photo features already available on my older device through third-party software.

By contrast, Gemini can now handle pretty much any image request I have through nano banana. (Brichtova says "nano banana" is a random nickname a tired developer came up with in the middle of the night; the official title is 2.5 Flash Image.) It has easily removed unwanted objects from my photos, altered lighting and text, and completely reimagined the style of my images in endless ways. I even had Gemini restore and colorize some family photographs from the 1940s; my relatives were blown away by the vividness. Other users have discovered incredibly clever ways to tap into nano banana's data savvy, such as asking the AI to show photorealistic views based on Google Maps pinpoints.

A family photo, before and after the author used Google's Gemini AI tool. Photographer: Austin Carr/Bloomberg

Brichtova says one of the bigger consumer pain points that the team aimed to solve was AI model latency. Anyone who's tried these models knows they often produce images at dial-up-era speeds, a huge source of frustration for people trying to swiftly mock up something at work or in chats with friends. "If you're trying to edit something conversationally and it's really snappy," she says, "it makes for a good user experience."

Indeed, the new Gemini usually takes less than five seconds to deliver me an image. In several cases, I copied the same prompt into ChatGPT, and it took more than a minute to handle the processing, with results not all that different from Google's. That makes me question my $20-per-month OpenAI subscription.

Another pain point has been visual consistency. Up till now, when you would ask an AI to touch up a photo or do incremental edits, models would often glitch and erroneously alter faces or other objects within the frame. With nano banana, that's much less of an issue, even when it comes to rendering text.

Gemini's output isn't perfect—there have been instances where nano banana hallucinated in its photo edits or returned an unchanged image that ignored my prompt. Brichtova says Gemini will continue to improve and is intended to deliver a baseline of quality for most people; if you need more specialized output, there will always be premium services available.

The hope is that, just as Flickr proved during the Web 2.0 days and Instagram during the mobile boom, photos will once again be a killer application, this time for AI. "All of these technology shifts tap into some innate human need," Brichtova explains. "Seeing yourself, seeing your family, documenting your life, being able to tell stories about it—new technologies enable those desires in different ways."

RELATED BACK-TO-SCHOOL CONTENT: How Chatbots and AI Are Already Transforming Kids' Classrooms

In Brief

A judge ruled that Trump's deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles during June protests violated federal law.
The US has revoked TSMC's authorization to freely ship essential gear to its main Chinese chipmaking base.
Paramount has struck a deal to produce a film based on the Call of Duty game franchise.

Turning Away From the Stars

The view above the Rubin Observatory. Photographer: Cristóbal Olivares for Bloomberg Businessweek

As the sun sets on the southern edge of Chile's Atacama Desert, the wind picks up, the temperature plummets, and the surrounding hills and mountains begin fading from view. Within minutes it's pitch-black, with not so much as a car headlamp in sight across the vast, rocky landscape. At an altitude of more than 8,500 feet, these peaks sandwiched between the Andes and the Pacific Ocean—about a day's drive from the capital, Santiago—rank among the driest, least hospitable places on Earth. (Props to the odd fox or herd of alpacas living among the scrub.) Yet for Chuck Claver, this is paradise. From the top of a mountain, he can see the celestial bodies dotting the night sky in unmatched brightness. The shine of faraway planets, stars and galaxies is hardly dimmed by light pollution or humidity.

Claver is a system scientist at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, eight stories' worth of cutting-edge, US government-funded research perched on one of these Atacama peaks. Named for the pioneering American astronomer, the Rubin is part of a global hub of at least 10 advanced telescopes in a region renowned for its dry, clear and calm night skies. In exchange for permission to operate in the country and some tax advantages, foreign-backed observatories reserve a portion of their telescope capacity for use by Chilean astronomers.

The telescope capping the Rubin facility will enable researchers to photograph outer space in unparalleled breadth and depth. Its enormous, multibillion-pixel camera can map the entire night sky every four days, something that puts it well beyond comparison to any other single terrestrial device. Rubin is in a testing phase now and is scheduled to begin formal operations in October. After that, it's expected to gather more astronomical data in a year than all other observatories of its kind have collected in human history. "My entire career has been putting this telescope together," says Claver, who saw the first sketch of what's now Rubin's design back in the 1990s. "Seeing it on stage, operating—it's awesome."

The catch is that the Rubin Observatory can't do everything by itself. Its wide-field telescope does a great job of spotting objects, but researchers need a different tool to study them in depth, to seek out life in other solar systems and to examine galaxies as they form. The project that would fill this need is called the Giant Magellan Telescope, sited about 80 miles to Rubin's north. The GMT is still in its early stages, so the site itself mostly looks like a series of large holes in the ground, along with some support buildings and service infrastructure. If President Donald Trump's administration continues to cut deeply into federal funding for scientific research, it might look that way for a long time.

Here's Valentina Fuentes and Bruce Einhorn on the risks of the US ceding telescope work to others: Trump's Space Research Cuts Are a Gift to China

A New Galaxy of Shoe Contracts

Illustration: Alex Gamsu Jenkins for Bloomberg Businessweek

Nike Inc.'s Jordan Brand has signed many athletes to signature sneaker deals. These are the highest-tier arrangements, with players getting a shoe and apparel with their own logo. Some are basketball legends: Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant, LeBron James. More recently, though, some are elite talents whose careers haven't reached the same heights. Ja Morant has had trouble off the court—the NBA suspended him for displaying firearms on social media. Zion Williamson has dealt with injuries, Devin Booker has played well for an inconsistent team, and Luka Dončić and Jayson Tatum had forgettable NBA Finals appearances.

This isn't to say Nike is in trouble. The company has successful signature lines with James and Durant, and a deal with Vanessa Bryant lets Nike release her late husband's line. Still, the hottest sneaker this year is from Adidas AG—the AE1, the signature shoe of Minnesota Timberwolves star Anthony Edwards. The "Ant-Man," a charismatic trash-talker who's known for nasty dunks as well as draining 3-pointers, has starred in goofy ads for the sneakers. In May, Foot Locker Inc. said it was the retailer's fastest-growing signature franchise. Other brands have had their moments too. The Oklahoma City Thunder's Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the reigning MVP, wore Converse during the NBA Finals. The next biggest name on the court was Tyrese Haliburton, who has a shoe with Puma SE.

These days, Nike has more to celebrate in the women's game. It's part of a corporate turnaround being overseen by new Chief Executive Officer Elliott Hill, who's trying to fix the company after it relied too much for too long on a retro streetwear strategy. "It makes sense that they are going after this, especially given the explosion in popularity that the WNBA has experienced," says Beth Goldstein, a footwear industry analyst at Circana, a market research company. "Women's sports in general is a clear growth opportunity."

Randall Williams writes in the latest Field Day column that Caitlin Clark's upcoming signature shoe should be a big win: Nike's WNBA Stars Are Outshining Their Male Counterparts

Hot Dog!

That's the number of companies Kraft Heinz Co. said Tuesday it plans to split into, undoing a megadeal from a decade ago that turned the maker of Kraft Mac & Cheese into one of the largest packaged food sellers in the world. Oscar Mayer meats and Lunchables will separate from Heinz ketchup and other iconic condiments.

Strong Demand

"Creatine is both underrated because there's a lot of people that are still kind of fearful of creatine and there's so many benefits to it, but I also think it's one of the most overrated supplements as well."

Scott Forbes

Professor at Brandon University

Sales of the long-stigmatized supplement are booming as women and older Americans seek the benefits of muscle growth.