By Brent D. Griffiths
Publication Date: 2026-01-16 16:54:00
The person who named Google’s Nano Banana AI image-generation model has a pretty good idea of why the world found it so appealing.
“One reason we were successful is the model was available everywhere from day one — it didn’t matter what country you were in, or whether you were a developer or a consumer, you had it on the same day,” Product Manager Naina Raisinghani recently told Keyword, Google’s official blog. “And then culturally relevant prompts went viral everywhere, like the popular figurine trend, which started in Thailand, or the saree trend in India.”
Google revealed that Raisinghani was the originator of the model’s zany codename, a last-minute decision.
“So at 2:30 a.m., one of the PMs messaged me saying we needed to submit it, and I said, ‘OK, how about something funny like ‘Nano Banana’?’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah, sure. That’s completely nonsensical,'” Raisinghani told Keyword.
The search giant previously had a sweet tooth when it publicly…
