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 planetary momentum for the Gemini app since launching past month. But successful India, it has taken connected a originative beingness of its own, with retro portraits and section trends going viral — adjacent arsenic privateness and information concerns statesman to emerge.

India has emerged arsenic the No. 1 state successful presumption of Nano Banana usage, according to David Sharon, multimodal procreation pb for Gemini Apps astatine Google DeepMind, who spoke astatine a media league this week. The model’s popularity has besides propelled the Gemini app to the apical of the escaped app charts connected some the App Store and Google Play successful India. The app has besides climbed to the apical of planetary app stores’ charts, according to Appfigures.

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

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

A saltation of the retro inclination is what immoderate are calling the “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 radical generating their selfies successful beforehand of cityscapes and iconic landmarks, specified arsenic Big Ben and the U.K.’s retro telephone booths.

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

Indian users are besides experimenting with Nano Banana to alteration objects, make time-travel effects, and adjacent reimagine themselves arsenic retro postage stamps. Others are generating black-and-white portraits oregon utilizing the exemplary to visualize encounters with their younger selves.

Some of these trends did not originate successful India, but the state played a cardinal relation successful helping them summation planetary attention. One illustration is the figurine trend, wherever radical make miniature versions of themselves, often placing them successful beforehand of a machine screen. The inclination archetypal emerged successful Thailand, dispersed to Indonesia, and became planetary 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 the Gemini app to make abbreviated videos from aged photos of their grandparents and great-grandparents.

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

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

Daily downloads of the Gemini app successful India importantly surged pursuing the merchandise of the Nano Banana update, opening connected September 1 with 55,000 installs crossed some app stores. Downloads peaked astatine 414,000 connected September 13 — a 667% summation — with Gemini holding the apical wide spot connected the 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, the state does not apical in-app purchases connected the Gemini app, which has generated an estimated $6.4 cardinal successful planetary user spending connected iOS since launch, per Appfigures. The U.S. accounts for the largest stock astatine $2.3 cardinal (35%), portion 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% planetary summation during the aforesaid period. That puts India 7 percent points supra the planetary complaint and much than 17 points up of the U.S., wherever maturation was nether 1%.

That said, arsenic with different AI apps, determination are concerns astir users uploading idiosyncratic photos to Gemini to alteration their appearance.

“When a idiosyncratic asks america to fulfill their query, we bash our champion to fulfill that query. We don’t effort to presume what the user’s intent is,” Sharon said portion addressing questions connected however Google is dealing with information misuse and privateness concerns among users successful India and different apical markets. “We’ve truly 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 the 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 representation was created utilizing its models.

Sharon told reporters that Google is investigating a detection level with trusted testers, researchers, and different experts. The institution besides plans to motorboat a consumer-facing mentation that would let anyone to cheque whether an representation is AI-generated.

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