Google's Nano Banana 2: What Canadian Businesses Need to Know About AI Image Generation

At 2am on a Friday night, Google engineer Naina Raisinghani submitted a new image model to LMArena under the codename "Nano Banana." The name was a joke. Within four days, 13 million people had used it. Within a week, the model had generated over 5 billion images. Google's Nano Banana 2 — officially Gemini 3.1 Flash Image — is now the fastest-adopted AI image generator ever launched. Here is what it means for your business.

What Is Nano Banana 2?

Nano Banana 2 is Google's codename for Gemini 3.1 Flash Image, a multimodal AI model that generates and edits images from text prompts. The name originated when Naina Raisinghani, a Google engineer, submitted the model anonymously to LMArena — a public benchmark where users blind-test AI models — at 2am under the throwaway name "Nano Banana." The model immediately climbed to the top of the leaderboard. By the time Google officially announced it, the codename had stuck.

The key technical details: Nano Banana 2 is 40% faster than Nano Banana Pro (the previous top model) and costs roughly half as much. It generates images in 3-5 seconds, handles character consistency for up to 5 people and 14 objects in a single scene, and renders text within images with 94% accuracy. All outputs carry SynthID watermarking, Google's invisible digital provenance signal.

You can access it three ways: the Gemini app (free, it is now the default model), Google AI Studio (free for development), and Vertex AI (enterprise-grade with GCP billing). For most Canadian businesses evaluating AI image generation, the free tier is sufficient to test workflows before committing to API-level usage.

How Does Nano Banana 2 Compare to Midjourney and DALL-E?

Speed is the first differentiator. Nano Banana 2 generates images in 3-5 seconds. In the time it takes Midjourney to produce 3-4 variations, you can test 20 with Nano Banana 2. For marketing teams iterating on campaign visuals or e-commerce teams generating product shots at scale, that speed difference compounds into significant time savings.

Quality is close to parity for most business applications. Nano Banana 2 handles character consistency, complex scenes, and text rendering better than both competitors. Where Midjourney still wins is pure artistic expression — atmospheric, emotional, editorial-style imagery where mood and style matter more than accuracy. As AI image researcher Erik Lutenegger noted in his LinkedIn comparison, Midjourney remains the better choice for "artistic and atmospheric" work, but Nano Banana 2 is "unbelievably good" for practical commercial applications.

The real-time web knowledge feature is unique to Nano Banana 2. Because it is built on Gemini's multimodal architecture, it can reference current logos, landmarks, and products when generating images. Neither Midjourney nor DALL-E can do this. For a detailed breakdown of Midjourney's pricing tiers in Canadian dollars, see our Midjourney pricing guide.

What Does It Cost in Canadian Dollars?

The free tier is genuinely free. The Gemini app now uses Nano Banana 2 as its default image model, and there is no usage cap for consumer accounts. Google AI Studio is also free for development and prototyping.

For API-level usage through Vertex AI, the pricing breaks down as follows:

For context, a Midjourney Standard plan costs roughly $40 CAD/month for 15 hours of GPU time. At Nano Banana 2's API pricing, $40 CAD buys approximately 440 standard images — more than most businesses generate in a month. For a full comparison of AI tool pricing in Canada, see our AI tools pricing guide.

What Can Canadian Businesses Actually Use This For?

The practical applications fall into five main categories, each with different ROI profiles depending on your business model.

E-commerce product visualization at scale. Generate product shots, lifestyle images, and variations without booking photographers or renting studios. A Canadian e-commerce company with 500 SKUs can generate multiple lifestyle shots per product for under $50 CAD — work that would cost $5,000-$15,000 with traditional photography. The character and object consistency features (up to 5 people, 14 objects) make it practical to maintain visual coherence across a product catalogue.

Marketing asset creation. Social media graphics, ad variations, localized content, and campaign visuals. The 3-5 second generation time means a marketing team can test 20 creative variations in a single meeting instead of waiting days for a designer to produce 3-4 options. The text rendering accuracy (94%) makes it viable for graphics that include headlines, CTAs, or product copy. For more on how Canadian marketers are using AI tools, see our guide on ChatGPT for marketing in Canada.

Mockups and prototyping. Generate UI mockups, packaging concepts, signage previews, and presentation visuals in seconds. The text rendering accuracy is particularly valuable here — mockups that include realistic copy are more useful for stakeholder feedback than placeholder text.

Infographics and data visualizations. Gemini's reasoning capabilities combined with web knowledge allow it to generate infographic-style images that incorporate real data points. As Ethan Mollick noted, this is "the first model to handle complex images and diagrams with real consistency."

Brand consistency across campaigns. The character and object fidelity features let you maintain consistent brand characters, mascots, and visual elements across multiple assets. Tools like Figma and Notion are already integrating Gemini's image generation capabilities, which means these features will increasingly be available inside the tools your team already uses.

How Do You Get Started with Nano Banana 2?

The path depends on your use case and technical resources.

Consumer (free, immediate). Open the Gemini app at gemini.google.com. Nano Banana 2 is now the default image generation model — just describe what you want. No setup, no API keys, no billing. This is the fastest way to evaluate quality for your specific use cases.

Developer (free, API access). Google AI Studio provides free API access for development and prototyping. You can test programmatic image generation, experiment with prompt engineering for consistent results, and build proof-of-concept integrations before committing to production infrastructure.

Enterprise (Vertex AI). For production workloads, Vertex AI through Google Cloud Platform provides enterprise-grade reliability, SLAs, and the ability to deploy in specific regions including Montreal (northamerica-northeast1) for Canadian data residency requirements. This is the path for businesses generating hundreds or thousands of images per day.

One underrated feature for teams new to AI image generation: Nano Banana 2 includes a templates system that addresses the "blank page problem." As Google's David Sharon explained on LinkedIn, templates give users a starting point for common image types — product shots, social media posts, presentations — so teams do not need to learn prompt engineering from scratch to get usable results.

All outputs carry SynthID watermarking, Google's invisible digital watermark that identifies images as AI-generated. This is baked into every image and cannot be removed. For businesses concerned about content provenance and transparency, this is a feature, not a bug — it provides an auditable trail that your marketing materials disclose their AI origin.

What Are the Limitations?

Nano Banana 2 is not the best choice for every image generation task. Understanding where it falls short helps you allocate tools effectively.

Artistic expression. Midjourney remains superior for atmospheric, emotional, and editorial-style imagery. If your brand relies on highly stylized visual identity — fine art aesthetics, moody editorial photography, or complex artistic compositions — Midjourney produces more distinctive results. As Erik Lutenegger's side-by-side comparisons on LinkedIn showed, Nano Banana 2 is "unbelievably good" for practical applications but Midjourney still has the edge for pure artistic work.

SynthID watermarking is non-optional. Every image carries an invisible digital watermark. For most business applications this is irrelevant, but if you need images that cannot be identified as AI-generated, Nano Banana 2 is not the right tool. This is a deliberate design decision by Google around content provenance and responsible AI.

Enterprise features require GCP setup. While the free tier covers testing and light usage, production-grade deployments need a Google Cloud Platform account with Vertex AI configured. For organisations without existing GCP infrastructure, this adds setup overhead compared to a simple Midjourney subscription.

Not perfect on complex compositions. As AI researcher Ethan Mollick noted, Nano Banana 2 is "not perfect but the first model to handle complex images and diagrams with real consistency." For highly detailed technical diagrams or intricate multi-element scenes, you may still need human refinement or multiple generation passes.

Frequently Asked Questions