I much prefer using ridiculous names for AI software.
Also, the speed of AI change is incredible.
Let’s talk about Nano Banana
Last week Google launched Gemini 2.5 Flash Image (aka “nano-banana” - a product codename that just stuck). Here’s the Google Developer’s Blog announcement.
Access Banana from your Google Gemini App.
Long story short: Google’s become a reliable creative AI partner. In less than a year, its AI image-gen product team has solved a lot of challenges, i.e. character consistency, source image fidelity, and the ability to combine references. If you’re a creative person working primarily in visuals, the past 12 months have been staggering.
Midjourney launched its web editor last August, and video capability this June
OpenAI integrated image generation into GPT-4o
Adobe made at least two updates to Firefly and incorporated both OpenAI and Google, while adding Firefly Boards
Google launched Imagen 2, 3, and 4… Veo3 video, and now Nano Banana
You can give it reference images and place people into specific environments…
Not bad!
Does it work flawlessly? Of course not.
Futurepedia has over 20 minutes of details and examples to get more out of Nano Banana. Anangsha Alammyan authored a lengthy tutorial including image blending tips.
Nate Jones goes even further. Nano Banana might be a silly name but the product is extraordinary.
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“A musical laxative for a constipated society”
Netflix released the DEVO documentary. If you’re into art, into culture, into the maddening process of creating either, this is worth your time. DEVO is the story of ideas, tenacity, persistence. They’re the band who showed how saying “no,” or “well, what if?” led to more opportunities.
DEVO was born in a remarkable point in time. Mark Mothersbaugh and Jerry Casale were on the campus of Kent State when the National Guard killed four students protesting the Vietnam War. Then they went on to create some of the first “music videos,” a decade before the idea of MTV existed—because that was their art, it was how they wanted to communicate. And there’s conflict, naturally. With the music industry, with themselves. You’ll marvel at the insanity of their first live gigs, and yet somehow they found themselves at CBGB’s getting introduced by David Bowie. It’s a testament to artistic process—you never know, until you try.
Is it your job to help improve Claude, or any AI model?
The Internet adage, “If you’re not paying for the product, then you are the product” should be updated to, “Even if you’re paying for the product, AI companies believe you are the product.” Sigh.
If you use Anthropic’s Claude, in any capacity except an Enterprise license, you should login now and head to Settings>Privacy. Under the Privacy settings, look for “Help improve Claude.” Toggle it off.
As of right now the default state is “on.” Meaning your chat history on Claude could be used to train Anthropic’s models. Meaning, what was once touted as private is no longer private.
💖 “Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.” 😆
Noah and James at the AI firm Alephic decided to re-publish the CIA's 1944 Simple Sabotage Field Manual. If you’ve never heard of this publication, it is well worth your time investigating. In short, way back when we were fighting fascists, the strategists in the CIA documented what essentially became modern American bureaucracy.
“Haggle over precise wordings of communications.”
“Refer all matters to committees.”
😆
I wrote a piece about Simple Sabotage a long time ago. It is the anti-thesis of everything Seth Godin has published. Bravo,
How Not to AI: J.Crew
The team over at
have delivered a deep dive into J.Crew’s recent adventures with AI. In short: The retailer used generative AI for its latest campaign, and not very well, so people have noticed. AdAge has more.
The problem here isn’t using AI. The problem is lack of quality control, of, I don’t know—hiring a decent retoucher? And now we’re left wondering what else the brand is missing.
How to AI: Ari & Friends “There’s a number on the screen”
As Ari Merkin puts it, “We had almost no budget and no shot at making this ad otherwise. Thanks to AI, we could and did.” Made with Veo3, this idea demonstrates where and how AI can have a profound and useful impact.