Google DeepMind just shipped the cheapest, fastest member of the Nano Banana family. Model ID: gemini-3.1-flash-lite-image. It’s an image-generation model built for one thing — throughput. One image in under 4 seconds, roughly 2.7× faster than Gemini 3.1 Flash Image, at a flat $0.034 per 1,000 images. On Artificial Analysis’s text-to-image leaderboard it sits at #5 with a 1255 Elo, which is remarkable for a “lite” tier.
What it actually does
It keeps the Nano Banana tricks — real-world knowledge for fast drafts, character consistency across multiple generations, and quick text rendering with localization — but strips latency and cost to the bone. Outputs come at 1K resolution across 14 aspect ratios, each carrying an invisible SynthID watermark.
The API angle
This is the point: it’s an API model, not a chat toy. Call it through the Gemini API, Google AI Studio, or the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform. Typical use case is high-volume pipelines — ad variants, product mockups, thumbnail farms — where you generate thousands of images and every fraction of a cent matters. It’s also rolling into Search AI Mode and the Gemini app for consumers. Google shipped Gemini Omni Flash alongside it.
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