Google's AI tool Gemini app has climbed to the top of both the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store, overtaking OpenAI's ChatGPT. The sudden boom is attributed to the viral "Nano Banana" AI trend, which enables users to create toy-like 3D figurine portraits from their photos. The feature, offered at no charge to all customers, has attracted worldwide interest and upended Gemini's ascent in app rankings.
The Nano Banana trend started softly, but by the past week had exploded across platforms like Instagram and X. Social feeds are now filled with collectible-style 3D avatars packaged in toy-box themes. Regular users spurred early buzz, but the feature went mainstream when influencers and celebrities began posting their own figurine-like versions of themselves. It's a dominant new trend, similar to the "Ghibli-style" that put ChatGPT at the top of the list earlier this year, but this time, Gemini is leading.
Gemini tops the iOS and Android app store charts right now. ChatGPT, which led the rankings for months, has fallen to second place. The ouster underscores how AI-powered creativity has emerged as a key battlefield among tech giants such as OpenAI, Google, and even X's Grok.
What Makes Nano Banana Special
Unlike previous hypes, Nano Banana is available to all people, even free users. Free users might see a few seconds of added processing time, but the results are worth the effort overall; they're also quite realistic and highly shareable. The resulting figurines maintain natural-looking facial features and are stylized, playful acrylic miniatures to help them go viral on social media and beyond.
Even politicians and celebrities have been caught up in the trend. Recent examples include Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and Goa's CM Pramod Sawant, who flaunted their AI-generated figurines on social media. This celebrity adoption only has given it a push.
How to Join the Nano Banana Trend
Participating is simple. Users open the Google Gemini app and upload a solo portrait, along with a custom prompt, or let machine learning create one for you. In minutes, our system will provide a figurine-style image that can be tweaked or re-edited to improve the results. Google even expanded the feature to its AI Studio, so creators have more room.
While the Nano Banana doesn't have any practical applications, it demonstrates the advanced image-generation capabilities of Google's models. Observing such viral trends, industry watchers reckon it demonstrates how entertainment OUs' (other users') AI tools play in app store dominance.
The big question now is whether these gains will stick and if rivals like ChatGPT or Grok can develop their own viral feature to snatch users' attention back. For now, Gemini has the upper hand, fueled by a wave of playful 3D portraits in an accessible collectible style.
