Nano Banana 2 Lite
Simon Willison · Simon Willison · 2026-06-30
Simon Willison tests Google's newly released Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite Image (Nano Banana 2 Lite), the company's fastest and cheapest image generation model, finding improved output quality over prior Nano Banana models but persistent text-rendering errors.
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Topics: google-geminitext-to-imagellm-releaseimage-generation
Claims
- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite Image (Nano Banana 2 Lite) is Google's fastest and cheapest image generation model, engineered for velocity and scale.
- Willison's Where's Waldo-style raccoon test produced better results than earlier Nano Banana models tested in April.
- The model misspelled 'Forest Festival' in two different ways within a single generated image.
Key quotes
fastest and cheapest Gemini image model, engineered for velocity and scale
I like that one better than the results I got from the other Nano Banana models when I tried this back in April.
It spelled Forest Festival wrong in two different ways though.