Alphabet Rolls Out Gemini 2.5 Flash AI and Viral Nano Banana Tool

Alphabet (GOOGL, Financials) is leaning into the playful side of artificial intelligence with the wider release of its Gemini 2.5 Flash model and the viral Nano Banana tool that's helping it win over millions of users.

The company said that Gemini 2.5 Flash is now available for production use, offering developers support for 10 aspect ratios that make it easier to create content across social platforms. At the same time, Nano Banana, a quirky image-generation tool that lets users create animated GIFs and edits, has gone viral and helped Gemini surpass OpenAI's ChatGPT as the most downloaded free app in Apple's App Store.

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai leaned into the buzz, encouraging developers to go bananas in a post on X.

For investors, the momentum is meaningful. The surge in Gemini adoption has added energy to Alphabet's AI story, helping lift the company past a $3 trillion market value last month. Analysts say the release underscores how Google is balancing infrastructure investments with consumer-facing AI products in its battle with OpenAI and Meta.