@hn_eb203d
about 1 month ago
Google updated it early in AI Studio so I've been experimenting: - Base pricing for a 1024x1024 image is almost 1.6x what normal Nano Banana is ($0.067 vs. $0.039), however you can now get a 512x512 image for cheaper, or a 4k image for cheaper than four 1k images: https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/pricing#gemini-3.1-fla... - Thinking is now configurable between `Minimal` and `High` (was not the case with Nano Banana Pro) - Safety of the model appears to be increased so typical copyright infringing/NSFW content is difficult to generate (it refused to let me generate cartoon characters having taken psychedelics) - Generation speed is really slow (2-3min per image) but that may be due to load. - Prompt adherence to my trickier prompts for Nano Banana Pro (https://minimaxir.com/2025/12/nano-banana-pro/) is much worse, unsurprisingly. For example I asked it to make a 5x2 grid with 10 given inputs and it keeps making 4x3 grids with duplicate inputs. However, I am skeptical with their marquee feature: image search. Anyone who has used Nano Banana Pro for awhile knows that it will strongly overfit on any input images by copy/pasting the subject without changes which is bad for creativity, and I suspect this implementation appears the same. Additionally I have a test prompt which exploits the January 2025 knowledge cutoff: Generate a photo of the KPop Demon Hunters performing a concert at Golden Gate Park in their concert outfits. That still fails even with Grounding with Google Search and Image Search enabled, and more charitable variants of the prompt. tl;dr the example images (https://deepmind.google/models/gemini-image/flash/) seem similar to Nano Banana Pro which is indeed a big quality improvement but even relative to base Nano Banana it's unclear if it justifies a "2" subtitle especially given the increased cost.