The Nano Banana image generation model, officially known as the Flash Gemini 2.5 image, fueled the global shoot of the Gemini application since launching last month. But in India he took care of his own life, and the portraits of retro and local trends become viral – even when concerns about privacy and security begin to appear.
According to David Sharon, India appeared as country 1 in terms of the use of Banana Nano Banana, the main generation of Multimodal Generation at Google Deepmind, which spoke at the media session this week. The popularity of the model also led to the Gemini application at the top of the free application charts both at the App Store and Google Play in India. According to AppFigures, the application also climbed the top of the Global Charts of the APP Stores.
Considering the India-Drugi scale as to the size of the smartphone market in the world and the second largest online population after China-it is not a surprise that the country is running in adoption. But what attracts Google's attention is not only how many people use Nano Banana is like: millions of Indians are involved with the AI ​​model in an extremely local, highly creative way, and in some cases completely unexpected.
One of the outstanding trends are Indians using Nano Banana to recreate the retro appearance of the Bollywood inspired from the 90s, imagining how they could appear in this era, along with fashion, hairstyles and makeup. This trend is local for India, Sharon said to reporters.
The retro trend variety is what some call “Sari Ai”, in which users generate vintage portraits in a traditional Indian outfit.
Another local trend in India is people generating their selfies before urban landscapes and iconic landmarks, such as Big Ben and British telephone stands.
“We saw a lot at first,” said Sharon.
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Indian users also experiment with Nano Banana to transform objects, create the effects of time travel, and even imagine retro postal stamps again. Others generate black and white portraits or use a model to visualize meetings with younger ones.
Some of these trends were not created in India, but the country played a key role in helping them gain global attention. One example is Figurine trendWhere people generate miniature versions of themselves, often placing them in front of the computer screen. Sharon said that the trend appeared for the first time in Thailand, spread to Indonesia and became global after gaining adhesion in India.
In addition to Nano Banana, Google has observed a trend in which Indian users use their VEO 3 AI video generation model in the Gemini application to create short films from old photos of their grandparents and great -grandmothers.
All this helped to increase the popularity of Gemini both at the App Store and Google Play in India. Between January and August, the application recorded an average of 1.9 million monthly downloads in the country – about 55% higher than in the USA – constituting 16.6% of global monthly downloads, in accordance with the Appifigures data made available only to TechCrunch.
This year, until August, India was downloaded by 15.2 million; On the other hand, the US had 9.8 million downloads this year, for the Appifigures data.
Daily download of the Gemini application in India increased significantly after the Nano Banana update is released, from September 1 with 55,000 installations in both application stores. Downloading reached the highest level of 414,000 on September 13 – an increase of 667% – with Gemini ranks the highest place in the iOS application system from September 10 and Google Play from September 12, including in all categories, shows data on APPFIGures data.
Although India leads to download, this country is not the highest purchases in the application in the Gemini application, which generated about $ 6.4 million for global consumer expenditure on iOS from launch, on applications. The US is the largest share in USD 2.3 million (35%), while India contains USD 95,000 (1.5%). However, India recorded a record increase in expenses by 18% of the month of months, reaching USD 13,000 between September 1 and 16-in comparison with 11% global increase in the same period. This puts India with seven percentage points above the global rate and over 17 points before the USA, where the increase was below 1%.
To say, as in the case of other AI applications, there are concerns about sending personal photos to Gemini to change their appearance.
“When the user asks us to ask our inquiry, we try to ask this question. We do not try to assume what the user's intention is,” Sharon said, dealing with how Google deals with improper use of data and problems related to privacy in India and other highest markets. “We really tried to improve it and improved it to be brave and fulfill your request.”
Google places a visible diamond -shaped watermark in the paintings generated by the Nano Banana model, and also embeds the hidden marker with its help Synthid tool To identify the content generated by AI. Synthid allows Google to detect and mean whether the image has been created using its models.
Sharon told journalists that Google was testing a detected platform with trusted testers, scientists and other experts. The company also plans to launch a version addressed to consumers that would allow everyone to check if the image is generated.
“This is still the first day, and we are learning, and we learn together. There are things that we may need to improve in the future, and it is really your opinion from users, press, academic press and experts,” said Sharon.
