I Faked the Moon Landing With Google’s Nano Banana AI

The new system will turbocharge visual misinformation

Illustration by the author via Ideogram

Despite billions of dollars of AI investment, Google’s Gemini has always struggled with image generation. The company’s Flash 2.5 model has long felt like a sidenote in comparison to far better generators from the likes of OpenAI, Midjourney, and Ideogram.

That all changed last week with the release of Google’s new Nano Banana image AI. The wonkily named new system is live for most Gemini users, and its capabilities are insane.

To be clear, Nano Banana still sucks at generating new AI images.

But it excels at something far more powerful, and potentially sinister — editing existing images to add elements that were never there, in a way that’s so seamless and convincing that even experts like myself can’t detect the changes.

That makes Nano Banana (and its inevitable copycats) both invaluable creative tools and an existential threat to the trustworthiness of photos — both new and historical.

In short, with tools like this in the world, you can never trust a photo you see online again.

Come fly with me

As soon as Google released Nano Banana, I started putting it through its paces…