India Leads The Way On Google’s Nano Banana With A Local Creative Twist

Google’s Nano Banana image-generation model, officially known arsenic Gemini 2.5 Flash Image, has fueled world momentum for nan Gemini app since launching past month. But successful India, it has taken connected a imaginative life of its own, pinch retro portraits and section trends going viral — moreover arsenic privateness and information concerns statesman to emerge.

India has emerged arsenic nan No. 1 state successful position of Nano Banana usage, according to David Sharon, multimodal procreation lead for Gemini Apps astatine Google DeepMind, who said astatine a media convention this week. The model’s fame has besides propelled nan Gemini app to nan apical of nan free app charts connected some nan App Store and Google Play successful India. The app has besides climbed to nan apical of world app stores’ charts, according to Appfigures.

Given India’s standard — nan world’s second-largest smartphone marketplace and second-biggest online organization aft China — it is nary astonishment nan state is starring successful adoption. But what is catching Google’s attraction is not conscionable really galore group are utilizing Nano Banana, it is how: Millions of Indians are engaging pinch nan AI exemplary successful ways that are uniquely local, highly creative, and successful immoderate cases, wholly unexpected.

One of nan standout trends is Indians utilizing Nano Banana to re-create retro looks inspired by 1990s Bollywood, imagining really they mightiness person appeared during that era, complete pinch period-specific fashion, hairstyles, and makeup. This inclination is section to India, Sharon told reporters.

A variety of nan retro inclination is what immoderate are calling nan “AI saree,” wherever users make vintage-style portraits of themselves wearing accepted Indian attire.

Nano Banana’s Retro inclination sampleImage Credits:Google

Another inclination section to India is group generating their selfies successful beforehand of cityscapes and iconic landmarks, specified arsenic Big Ben and nan U.K.’s retro telephone booths.

“We saw a batch of that successful nan beginning,” Sharon said.

Indian users are besides experimenting pinch Nano Banana to toggle shape objects, create time-travel effects, and moreover reimagine themselves arsenic retro postage stamps. Others are generating black-and-white portraits aliases utilizing nan exemplary to visualize encounters pinch their younger selves.

Some of these trends did not originate successful India, but nan state played a cardinal domiciled successful helping them summation world attention. One illustration is nan figurine trend, wherever group make miniature versions of themselves, often placing them successful beforehand of a machine screen. The inclination first emerged successful Thailand, dispersed to Indonesia, and became world aft gaining traction successful India, Sharon said.

Nano Banana’s Figurine samplesImage Credits:Google

In summation to Nano Banana, Google has observed a inclination wherever Indian users are utilizing its Veo 3 AI video-generation exemplary connected nan Gemini app to create short videos from aged photos of their grandparents and great-grandparents.

All of this has helped thrust Gemini’s fame connected some nan App Store and Google Play successful India. Between January and August, nan app saw an mean of 1.9 cardinal monthly downloads successful nan state — astir 55% higher than successful nan U.S. — accounting for 16.6% of world monthly downloads, per Appfigures information shared exclusively pinch TechCrunch.

India downloads person totaled 15.2 cardinal this twelvemonth until August; nan U.S., connected nan different hand, has had 9.8 cardinal downloads truthful acold this year, per Appfigures data.

Daily downloads of nan Gemini app successful India importantly surged pursuing nan merchandise of nan Nano Banana update, opening connected September 1 pinch 55,000 installs crossed some app stores. Downloads peaked astatine 414,000 connected September 13 — a 667% summation — pinch Gemini holding nan apical wide spot connected nan iOS App Store since September 10 and connected Google Play since September 12, including crossed each categories, Appfigures information shows.

Image Credits:Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch

Despite India starring successful downloads, nan state does not apical in-app purchases connected nan Gemini app, which has generated an estimated $6.4 cardinal successful world user spending connected iOS since launch, per Appfigures. The U.S. accounts for nan largest stock astatine $2.3 cardinal (35%), while India contributes $95,000 (1.5%). However, India posted a grounds 18% month-over-month maturation successful spending, reaching $13,000 betwixt September 1 and 16 — compared to an 11% world summation during nan aforesaid period. That puts India 7 percent points supra nan world complaint and much than 17 points up of nan U.S., wherever maturation was nether 1%.

That said, arsenic pinch different AI apps, location are concerns astir users uploading individual photos to Gemini to toggle shape their appearance.

“When a personification asks america to fulfill their query, we do our champion to fulfill that query. We don’t effort to presume what nan user’s intent is,” Sharon said while addressing questions connected really Google is dealing pinch information misuse and privateness concerns among users successful India and different apical markets. “We’ve really tried to amended that, and we person improved that to beryllium bold and fulfil your request.”

Google places a visible, diamond-shaped watermark connected images generated by nan Nano Banana exemplary and besides embeds a hidden marker utilizing its SynthID tool to place AI-generated content. SynthID allows Google to observe and emblem whether an image was created utilizing its models.

Sharon told reporters that Google is testing a discovery level pinch trusted testers, researchers, and different experts. The institution besides plans to motorboat a consumer-facing type that would let anyone to cheque whether an image is AI-generated.

“This is still time one, and we’re still learning, and we’re learning together. There are things that we mightiness request to amended connected successful nan future, and it’s really your feedback from users, press, academia, and experts that helps america improve,” Sharon said.