Platform WatchJune 30, 2026via The Decoder
Google launches Nano Banana 2 Lite for fast AI images and Gemini Omni Flash for video via API
Why it matters
Google is shipping production-ready image and video generation APIs with significant speed and cost improvements, enabling developers to build multimodal workflows at scale. The chaining recommendation signals a strategic push into end-to-end generative content pipelines.
Key signals
- Nano Banana 2 Lite: 4-second image generation latency
- Pricing: $0.034 per image
- Gemini Omni Flash: video generation and editing via text prompts
- Video generation now available via API (first time)
- Google recommends chaining both models for image-to-video workflows
The hook
Four seconds. That's how fast Google's new Nano Banana 2 Lite generates images at $0.034 each—now available via API.
Google adds two new generative AI models. Nano Banana 2 Lite generates images in four seconds at $0.034 a pop. Gemini Omni Flash brings video generation and editing via text prompts to the API for the first time. Google recommends chaining both models to go from a quick image to an animated video.