The AI assistant’s image model is surprisingly capable, but not in the way you might expect.
Google pitches Gemini as an all-in-one productivity tool, one capable of helping with multiple aspects of the average person’s personal, professional, and creative life. And if it wasn’t clear the company viewed its AI assistant and models that way, the fact it inserts Gemini all over Google Workspace, is hopefully proof. The company’s belief isn’t all smoke without any fire, though. Google has started to demonstrate that Gemini can do things like edit your calendar or work inside apps in the right setting. Now, though, the company’s also interested in making Gemini a better tool for editing photos with its new «Nano Banana» image model.
Natural language photo editing — where you just tell Gemini how you want a photo to change — was part of the company’s pitch for the Pixel 10, but that feature is available in all the places you can access Google’s models now. While I remain skeptical that talking or typing your edits is better than physically manipulating with a mouse or stylus, after trying out Gemini’s new skills, I was impressed by just how much Gemini can do.
Gemini vs. photo editing software
Why would you let AI edit your photos?
So far, Google’s Gemini models have proven themselves adept at generating text and sorting through large quantities of data. As long as Google has considered Gemini «multimodal» it’s been able to understand and manipulate images, but the simple act of editing photos was still faster in Photoshop, Photomator, or Lightroom.
The promise of Al, and this updated version, is that you don’t need experience or knowledge of a specific piece of software to get the final image that you want, though. All you have to do is clearly ask for what you want and Gemini is supposed to be able to do the rest.
