Google announced the launch of the Nano Banana 2 Lite model for generating images with artificial intelligence, which is a new, improved version that focuses on speed and cost reduction, targeting companies and developers who need to create large quantities of images within commercial applications.
The model bears the technical name Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite Image via the Application Programming Interface (API), and is considered the fastest and least expensive Google Creative model. It can generate a 1K image in less than four seconds, for only $0.034 per thousand images, according to Google.
The model is now available through Google AI Studio, the Gemini API, and the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, targeting enterprise and enterprise developers.
Google explained that the Nano Banana 2 Lite model is based on the Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite architecture, and was designed to address one of the most prominent problems in image generation models, which is the balance between speed of execution and consumption of computational resources.
The model targets environments that require intensive image production, such as advertising platforms, e-commerce, and rapid development tools, with reduced response time and operational costs compared to the largest models.
The new version represents a significant improvement over its predecessor, the Nano Banana, which was based on Gemini 2.5 Flash Image, thanks to improving the general knowledge of the model, improving its ability to create scenes and contextual layouts, maintaining the stability of characters and elements across a series of images, in addition to improving the display of texts within images in multiple languages.
The Nano Banana 2 Lite model is limited to producing images with a resolution of 1K, unlike the Nano Banana 2 and Nano Banana Pro versions, which support resolutions up to 4K, but Google confirms that this restriction contributed to achieving higher efficiency.
The Nano Banana 2 Lite is aimed at software developers, advertising platforms and e-commerce, with a focus on automated content creation, while keeping elements consistent between images.
Google noted that editing images may take a little longer than creating them due to additional processing.