Google's Nano Banana Pose presents a direct threat to the artistic community
In the creative world, a new player has emerged, causing ripples of concern among artists. Google's latest AI innovation, Nano Banana, has been making waves in the gaming and animation industries, but not everyone is celebrating its arrival.
The concern stems from the fear of AI replacing human creativity. Many artists, including multi-digital content writer/creator Khaled S., have expressed their apprehensions about this development. Khaled, who works as a content creator during the day and an artist at night, shares the sentiment of his fellow creatives.
Social media has been abuzz with examples of Nano Banana's abilities. One such instance involves an AI "artist" named "-Zho-", who shared a remarkable demonstration. Using Nano Banana, "-Zho-" was able to generate a realistic model of an Asian woman from an artist's sketch on Pinterest.
However, the use of AI in creating art is not without controversy. Feeding an artist's work to a machine to produce art without the artist's consent is seen as disrespectful by many. This sentiment is heightened by the growing wave of layoffs in these industries, fuelling artists' concerns about job security.
Nano Banana, claimed to surpass competitors such as OpenAI's ChatGPT and Elon Musk's Grok, generates base sketches from models, creates poses and reactions from a single illustration, and can even produce comic panels in a specific style.
Google's illustration used to demonstrate Nano Banana's capabilities, the Gemini 2.5 Flash Image, is a case in point. Originally anonymous and appearing on LMArena's Image Edit Arena, it is part of Google's own Gemini ecosystem and not credited to an external illustrator.
The clash between AI-generated content and artists is intensifying with the release of Nano Banana. Artists spend years perfecting their craft, studying human anatomy, perspective, and their favourite artists. The idea of a robot replacing human creativity is a major concern for many creatives.
As the debate continues, one thing is clear: the relationship between artists and AI is shaping up to be a complex and fascinating one.
