Google's Nano Banana Now Lets You Drop Yourself Into Any AI Video
Gemini now lets you set up a persistent digital avatar once and place yourself in any AI-generated image or video without re-uploading a selfie each time.
- Persistent avatars in Gemini: Record your face and voice once; Gemini places you in any AI image or video without re-uploading a selfie each time.
- Powered by Nano Banana: The feature runs on Gemini 2.5 Flash Image (Nano Banana), Google's fast, versatile image model known for strong text rendering and character consistency.
- Google Vids integration: Avatars can now star in AI-generated videos via Google Vids, delivering spoken messages from a typed script with no camera required.
- SynthID watermarking: Every AI-generated video clip includes an invisible digital watermark so viewers can verify it was AI-made.
- Availability: Requires a Google AI plan; users must be 18+. Not available in the EEA, Switzerland, or the UK. Image personalization is now free for eligible U.S. users.
- Limitation: For photographic realism (headshots, product shots), Imagen 4 Ultra still outperforms Nano Banana in user testing.
Google just made it significantly less annoying to put yourself in AI-generated content. Gemini now supports persistent personal avatars: record your face and voice once, and you can drop yourself into any image or video scene without uploading a new selfie every time. The feature is rolling out today to Gemini app users in select countries, and it ties directly into Nano Banana, Google's viral image generation model.
What is Nano Banana, exactly?
The model powering Nano Banana is Gemini 2.5 Flash Image, Google's current-generation multimodal image model. The "Nano Banana" nickname was popularized by creators and AI content communities online as shorthand for Google's Gemini Flash Image model. The name stuck because the model punches well above its weight class for a free-to-access tool. It has since become the backbone of Gemini's entire personalized image stack.
Nano Banana refers to four distinct models available in the Gemini API, including Nano Banana 2 Lite (Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite Image), the fastest and cheapest option engineered for velocity and scale. Nano Banana 2 pulls from the Gemini model's real-world knowledge base and is powered by real-time information and images from web search to more accurately render specific subjects.
The selfie problem it solves
Every time you wanted to generate an image of yourself with a previous AI tool, you had to manually upload a photo, describe your appearance in the prompt, and hope the model kept your likeness consistent. That friction adds up fast, especially if you're iterating across multiple styles or scenes.