Runway has added Nano Banana 2 Lite to its platform, giving users access to Google's fastest and cheapest image generation model directly inside the Runway app. The integration is live now, and you can also ask Runway's Agent to use it by name.
What Runway is actually shipping
Nano Banana 2 Lite is Google's brand name for gemini-3.1-flash-lite-image, the speed-optimized end of the Nano Banana image model family. Runway is surfacing it as a selectable model in its image tool, sitting alongside its own Gen-4 Image model. The announcement is squarely a platform addition: Runway users now have a new, faster option for image generation without leaving the Runway environment.
What makes this notable is how the two access paths work:
- Direct: Go to the Runway image tool and select Nano Banana 2 Lite from the model picker.
- Via Agent: Ask Runway's Agent to use Nano Banana 2 Lite in a prompt, and it will route the generation accordingly.
The model behind the integration
Nano Banana 2 Lite is designed as the efficiency specialist of the image generation family, targeting sub-2 second latency and significantly reduced compute costs to enable high-volume interactive use cases and real-time consumer applications. Google states it returns a text-to-image in about four seconds at $0.034 per 1K-resolution image, while keeping reliable prompt adherence, strong character consistency, and legible in-image text.
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