The Rundown AI / Articles / AI / Google's viral model changes AI image editing

Google's viral model changes AI image editing

PLUS: Patients control AI and robotics with thought

Zach Mink

August 27, 2025

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. The AI world has been obsessed for weeks with a mystery model that appeared out of nowhere in testing to demolish the image editing leaderboard — and now, nano-banana has officially arrived.

Google just revealed the prized system as Gemini 2.5 Flash Image, and its ability to nail multi-step edits while preserving every detail might just spark the next wave of viral AI creative workflows.

In today’s AI rundown:

Google’s 2.5 Flash Image takes AI editing to new level
Anthropic trials Claude for agentic browsing
Prompt marketing videos with Gemini's Veo 3
Anthropic reveals how teachers are using AI
4 new AI tools, community workflows, and more

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

GOOGLE

🍌 Google’s 2.5 Flash Image takes AI editing to new level

Image source: Getty Images / 2.5 Flash Image Preview

The Rundown: Google just released Gemini Flash 2.5 Image (a.k.a. nano-banana in testing), a new AI model capable of precise, multi-step image editing that preserves character likeness while giving users more creative control over generations.

The details:

The model was a viral hit as ‘nano-banana’ in testing, rising to No. 1 on LM Arena’s Image Edit leaderboard by a huge margin over No. 2 Flux-Kontext.
Flash 2.5 Image supports multi-turn edits, letting users layer changes while maintaining consistency across the editing process.
The model can also handle blending images, applying and mixing styles across scenes and objects, and more, all using natural language prompts.
It also uses multimodal reasoning and world knowledge, making strategic choices (like adding correct plants for the setting) during the process.
The model is priced at $0.039 / image via API and in Google AI Studio, slightly cheaper than OpenAI’s gpt-image and BFL’s Flux-Kontext models.

Why it matters: AI isn’t ready to replace Photoshop-style workflows yet, but Google’s new model brings us a step closer to replacing traditional editing. With next-level character consistency and image preservation, the viral Flash Image AI could drive a Studio Ghibli-style boom for Gemini — and enable a wave of viral apps in the process.

TOGETHER WITH HUBSPOT

⏰ Save 10+ hours weekly with an AI personal assistant

The Rundown: Stop drowning in tasks and start delegating like top performers who use AI to handle 80% of their routine work. HubSpot’s free kit provides the exact templates, prompts, and systems that 10,000+ professionals use to complete a full day's work by lunch.

The AI Assistant Kit includes:

Ready-to-use "AI Assistant Command Center" for managing all your AI tools
Step-by-step implementation guide to master AI delegation in under 60 minutes
Built-in ROI calculator to track your time savings and productivity gains
Advanced prompts and templates to turn ChatGPT into a 24/7 productivity partner

Download your free AI Assistant Kit now.

ANTHROPIC

🖥️ Anthropic trials Claude for agentic browsing

Image source: Anthropic

The Rundown: Anthropic introduced a “Claude for Chrome” extension in testing to give the AI assistant agentic control over users’ browsers, aiming to study and address security issues that have hit other AI-powered browsers and platforms.

The details:

The Chrome extension is being piloted via a waitlist exclusively for 1,000 Claude Max subscribers in a limited preview.
Anthropic cited prompt injections as the key concern with agentic browsing, with Claude using permissions and safety mitigations to reduce vulnerabilities.
Brave discovered similar prompt injection issues in Perplexity's Comet browser agent, with malicious instructions able to be inserted into web content.
The extension shows safety improvements over Anthropic’s previously released Computer Use, an early agentic tool that had limited abilities.

Why it matters: Agentic browsing is still in its infancy, but Anthropic’s findings and recent issues show that security for these systems is also still a work in progress. The extension move is an interesting contrast from standalone platforms like Comet and Dia, which makes for an easy sidebar add for those loyal to the most popular browser.

AI TRAINING

🎥 Prompt marketing videos with Gemini's Veo 3

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Gemini's Veo 3 to generate short marketing clips from simple text prompts or images — perfect for creating campaign assets without a video team.

Step-by-step:

Go to Gemini and select "Tools" → "Videos with Veo"
Build your brief by either dragging in an image reference or typing a description with clear scenes and "must-show" elements
Use this prompt structure: "Create a [product] video. Theme: [message]. Scene 1: [description]. Scene 2: [transition]. Must show: [key element]"
Submit and wait for rendering (Note: ~2 videos per day limit on Pro plan)
Export to Canva or your editor to swap text, add licensed music, and crop for different platforms (9:16, 1:1, 16:9)

Pro tip: Be explicit with transition terms like "whip pan" or "match cut" in your prompts — Veo honors specific cinematography language better than vague descriptions.

PRESENTED BY RETOOL

🗓️ Join us at Retool Summit in SF

The Rundown: On October 7, Retool is taking over SFJAZZ for a one-day event full of engaging sessions, hands-on building, and networking with fellow Retool builders.

At Retool Summit, you can expect:

Mainstage talks on AI and app development
Training sessions with the Retool team
A fireside chat with Stripe CEO Patrick Collison
A peek at some exciting Retool product news

AI RESEARCH

📝 Anthropic reveals how teachers are using AI

Image source: Anthropic

The Rundown: Anthropic just published a new report analyzing 74,000 conversations from educators on Claude, discovering that professors are primarily using AI to automate administrative work, with using AI for grading a polarizing topic

The details:

Educators most often used Claude for curriculum design (57%), followed by academic research support (13%), and evaluating student work (7%).
Professors also built custom tools with Claude’s Artifacts, ranging from interactive chemistry labs to automated grading rubrics and visual dashboards.
AI was used to automate repetitive tasks (financial planning, record-keeping), but less automation was preferred for areas like teaching and advising.
Grading was the most controversial, with 49% of assessment conversations showing heavy automation despite being rated as AI’s weakest capability.

Why it matters: Students using AI in the classroom has been a difficult adjustment for the education system, but this research provides some deeper insights into how it’s being used on the other side of the desk. With both adoption and acceleration of AI still rising, its use and acceptance are likely to vary massively from classroom to classroom.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

🍌 Gemini 2.5 Flash Image - Google’s new SOTA image editing model
🎬 Wan2.2-S2V - Open-source speech-to-video AI with audio capabilities
🗣️ Google Translate - New AI-powered live translations for 70+ languages
🎨 Adobe Firefly - AI creative platform, now featuring Gemini 2.5 Flash Image

📰 Everything else in AI today

Japanese media giants Nikkei and Asahi Shimbun filed a joint lawsuit against Perplexity, a day after it launched a revenue-sharing program for publishers.

U.S. first lady Melania Trump announced the Presidential AI Challenge, a nationwide competition for K-12 students to create AI solutions for issues in their community.

Google introduced new AI upgrades to its Google Translate platform, including real-time on-screen translations for 70+ languages and interactive language learning tools.

Stanford researchers published a new report on AI’s impact on the labor market, finding a 13% decline in entry-level jobs for ‘AI-exposed’ professions.

AI2 unveiled Asta, a new ecosystem of agentic tools for scientific research, including research assistants, evaluation frameworks, and other tools.

Scale AI announced a new $99M contract from the U.S. Department of Defense, aiming to increase the adoption of AI across the U.S. Army.

COMMUNITY

🤝 Community AI workflows

Every newsletter, we showcase how a reader is using AI to work smarter, save time, or make life easier.

Today’s workflow comes from reader Simon S. in England:

“I design and operate luxury holidays for visitors to Europe. Each client has specific wants and needs; the variables are huge. I created an agent that understands the style of programs I want to design, and provided it with a brief of what that particular client desires. Within seconds, I have a framework to begin tweaking. Once the program is finalized, another agent breaks down all the costs I need to cover in my quote, including making recommended rates from online trawling. A final agent then pulls all that together into the final format for my client. What was easily a few hours’ work is now condensed into 30-45 minutes."

How do you use AI? Tell us here.