Google’s Gemini App has captured the App Store’s top ranking, unseating ChatGPT from a position it held for nearly three years.

First usage metrics for Google’s Nano Banana image generation technology show remarkable traction since deployment. Josh Woodward, leading the Gemini App division, revealed the model brought 10 million fresh sign-ups to the platform while generating more than 200 million total images.

Traffic analytics from Similarweb indicate Google AI Studio saw substantial visitor growth after Nano Banana’s arrival, with daily visits climbing over 50%—rising from roughly 3 million to beyond 4.5 million.

Benchmark Results Show Dominant Editing Performance

Nano Banana marks Google’s newest image generation advancement, replacing earlier Imagegen systems. Initially released as Gemini 2.5 Flash Image, Google switched back to the Nano Banana name following user requests—retaining the designation it carried during internal testing.

Lmarena rankings place Nano Banana at the summit in both image generation and editing categories. The editing results particularly stand out, showing a substantial 171-point margin over Flux-1-kontext-max, the runner-up system. Users consistently emphasize two distinguishing features: rapid generation speeds and editing accuracy. The technology shows sophisticated image understanding, altering only prompt-specified elements while preserving everything else.

Distribution Strategy and Popular Use Cases

The platform accepts uploaded photos and enables prompt-driven changes to multiple components—backgrounds, clothing, hair, body positioning. Transforming photos of humans or pets into 3D figurine renderings has become one of the most widely adopted features among early users.

Google distributed Nano Banana across several access points without payment requirements—Gemini App, Google AI Studio, and Vertex AI all provide complimentary entry. Developers needing API connections can utilize the model at $0.039 per image created. The company additionally launched an unconventional distribution channel through X, where users generate images by posting requests that tag NanaBanana.

The 10 million user addition signals strong market reception for Google’s image generation methodology, especially within a competitive field including Midjourney, DALL-E, and Stable Diffusion. The editing functionality particularly fills a void in existing AI imaging tools, where targeted modifications typically demand repeated attempts or manual refinement afterward.