Live data from Hacker News

Nano Banana 2: Google's latest AI image generation model

blog.google

101–110 of 593 posts

Re: Nano Banana 2: Google's latest AI image generation model

#101
post #91

The Chinese are so much ahead in this space, their models are way better at this stuff. For example, https://hunyuan.tencent.com/image/en?tabIndex=0 and https://seed.bytedance.com/en/seedream5_0_lite

which models? we have user-preference rankings that put NB2 on top: https://arena.ai/leaderboard/text-to-image

interesting, maybe this is just anedoctal experience then and I'm biased but I have been preferring theirs over Nano Banana

Re: Nano Banana 2: Google's latest AI image generation model

#102
I'm sure this has been written about but here's what happens long term - images are commoditized and lose their emotional appeal.

Probably about half of us here remember photos before the cell phone era. They were rare, and special, and you'd have a few photos per YEAR to look back on. The feel of photos back then, was at least 100x stronger than now. They were a special item, could be given as a gift. But once they became freely available that same amount of emotion is now split across many thousands of photos. (not saying this is good or bad, just increased supply reducing value of each item)

With image/art generation the same thing will happen and I can already feel it happening. Things that used to be beautiful or fantastic looking now just feel flat and AI-ish. If claymation scenes can be generated in 1s, and I see a million claymation diagrams a year, then claymation will lose its charm. If I see a million fake Tom Cruise videos, then it oversaturates my desire for desire for all Tom Cruise movies.

What a time to be alive.

Re: Nano Banana 2: Google's latest AI image generation model

#103

These image gen models are getting so advanced and life like that increasingly the general public are being duped into believing AI images are actually real (ex Facebook food images or fake OF models). Don't get me wrong I will enjoy the benefits of using this model for expressing myself better than ever before, but can't help feeling there's something also very insidious about these models too.

It's shitty, but I think it's almost as bad that people are calling everything AI. And I can't even blame them, despite how infuriating it is. It's just as insidious that even mundane things literally ARE AI now. I've seen at least twice now (that I'm aware of) where some cute, harmless, otherwise non-outrageous animal video was hiding a Sora watermark. So the crazy shit is AI. The mundane shit is AI. You wonder why…

It seems like a low level paranoia - now I find myself double checking that the youtube video I'm watching isn't some AI slop. All the creators use Getty b-rolls and increasingly AI generated stuff so much that it's not a far stretch to have the voice and script all be auto generated too.

I suppose if the AI was able to tell me a true and compelling story, I might not even mind so much. I just don't want to be spoon fed drivel for 15 minutes to find it was all complete made up BS.

Re: Nano Banana 2: Google's latest AI image generation model

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diagrams! So much documentation lacks diagrams because they are hard to make

True! Though I’d argue diagrams as code like PlantUML or Mermaid are better than an image!

Agree just from a text search perspective alone that Mermaid even ASCII diagrams are usually preferable.

Re: Nano Banana 2: Google's latest AI image generation model

#105

Interesting they get to rev this with the release of a new flash model. I'm speculating part of the distil pipeline includes the image gen stuff; that seems like internal tooling that will pay dividends over time, if true. New frontier model -> automatic new image model. Even if it's just incremental updates, it's good for both the product cadence and compounding improvements.

> the distil pipeline

I don't have inside info, but everything we've seen about gemini3.0 makes me think they aren't doing distillation for their models. They are likely training different arch/sizes in parallel. Gemini 3.0-flash was better than 3.0-pro on a bunch of tasks. That shouldn't happen with distillation. So my guess is that they are working in parallel, on different arches, and try out stuff on -flash first (since they're smaller and faster to train) and then apply the learnings to -pro training runs. (same thing kinda happened with 2.5-flash that got better upgrades than 2.5-pro at various points last year). Ofc I might be wrong, but that's my guess right now.

Re: Nano Banana 2: Google's latest AI image generation model

#106
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Art isn't just a job or a way to make money, like being a courier is.

For corporate art it is. Nobody draws memphis out of passion.

The real victims here are going to be the graphic designers who worked for firework importers.

Re: Nano Banana 2: Google's latest AI image generation model

#109

These image gen models are getting so advanced and life like that increasingly the general public are being duped into believing AI images are actually real (ex Facebook food images or fake OF models). Don't get me wrong I will enjoy the benefits of using this model for expressing myself better than ever before, but can't help feeling there's something also very insidious about these models too.

>fake OF models Soon many real OF models will be out of job when everyone will be able to produce content to their personal taste from a few prompts.

People already have access to every form of niche pornography they could dare to imagine (for absolutely free!), I really doubt that 'personal taste' is the part that makes OF models their money. They'll be fine.

Re: Nano Banana 2: Google's latest AI image generation model

#110

These image gen models are getting so advanced and life like that increasingly the general public are being duped into believing AI images are actually real (ex Facebook food images or fake OF models). Don't get me wrong I will enjoy the benefits of using this model for expressing myself better than ever before, but can't help feeling there's something also very insidious about these models too.

I actually think this was a good thing. Manipulating images incredibly convincingly was already possible but the cost was high (many hours of highly skilled work). So many people assumed that most images they were seeing were "authentic" without much consideration. By making these fake images ubiquitous we are forcing people to quickly learn that they can't believe what they see on the internet and tracking down sour…

> By making these fake images ubiquitous we are forcing people to quickly learn that they can't believe what they see on the internet and tracking down sources and deciding who you trust is critically important.

Has this thought process ever worked in real life? I know plenty of seniors who still believe everything that comes out of Facebook, be AI or not, and before that it was the TV, radio, newspapers, etc.

Most people choose to believe, which is why they have a hard time confronting facts.

Post reply on HN