Google Search Now Has Image Editing, For Some Reason
Summary
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Google adds Nano Banana image editing to Lens/Search – useful but feels like overhead in a search tool.
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NotebookLM uses Nano Banana for visual previews, new art styles, pop-up images, and a ‘Brief’ format.
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Nano Banana will soon be heading to Google Photos – image editing integrates better there than in search.
Google’s AI features, at least many of them, are useful. But often they can cross the line and become bloatware, as is the case with the vast majority of AI elements Google has attempted to add to search. Now it has an image editing feature, but we really didn’t need it here.
Google announced the integration of its new Nano Banana image template into Google Search, NotebookLM and, in the near future, Google Photos. Google Search integration is part of Google Lens, which is used to search for images and images from your phone. Android and iOS users will find a new “Create” mode in the Lens interface. By taking a new photo or selecting an existing one from their gallery, you can use Nano Banana to instantly edit and transform your images. So not only can you search with an image, but you can also use that image as a canvas for AI-powered creative editing right in the Google app.
I don’t know if this was necessary. Sure, AI image editing can be cool, but in Google Search it can be a bit useless. Google Lens is used for search, after all, and if you want to edit an image, you’re going to go to other apps, not Google Search. It’s a bit like setting up an ice cream stand in the middle of a hardware store. Of course, it’s okay, and some people will have it… But why?
The other Nano Banana integrations that were just announced make a little more sense. For NotebookLM, the Nano Banana integration functions as a powerful “under the hood” enhancement for video presentation functionality. This update introduces several new features aimed at making searching and note-taking more visually intuitive. The template now offers six new art styles for generating previews, including watercolor and anime, allowing for more stylized and engaging summaries. It will also generate contextual images based on a user’s source documents. This feature aims to visually summarize complex information, making it easier for users to grasp key concepts from their documents, videos, or other sources. NotebookLM will also benefit from a new format called “Brief”, designed to provide quick and concise visual information when a full, detailed overview is not required.
Nano Banana will also be coming to Google Photos in the coming weeks. The specific details of this integration haven’t been released yet, but if I had to guess, it would be some sort of image editing feature, just like the one that was just added to Google Lens. Here, however, it would make a lot more sense, since Google Photos already has a suite of basic but useful editing features, so it’s sort of the natural next step if we want to add generative AI to the app.
All of these should be going live soon if you don’t have them already.
Source: Google
