Key Highlights –
- Google’s Gemini has overtaken ChatGPT in top downloads in U.S. App Store rankings.
- This is due to the viral Nano Banana trend, picked up on social media.
- Users can create their own 3D figurines, by following a simple guide below.
Trends often sway markets in an interestingly unrivalled way, and just how March 2025, saw the Ghibli trend with ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini has now secured the top spot in Apple’s App Store in the U.S. Interestingly, xAI’s CEO Elon Musk had sued Apple and OpenAI citing foul play for favouring the latter’s AI chatbot in the Store rankings.
Gemini, with its recent Nano Banana update has quickly picked up the trend of using the model’s latest abilities to transform user images into 3D figurine-style image portraits. This has now gone viral, with users sharing their figurine images and creations on their stories and the rest following suit.
Wow, $GOOGL Gemini has overtaken ChatGPT in top downloads in the US on iOS.
— Rihard Jarc (@RihardJarc) September 13, 2025
Something to keep an eye on as ChatGPT has dominated the standings for months now.$GOOGL execution and product shipment showing results… pic.twitter.com/Qg4wTmeT09
But what is this Nano Banana trend and how can you create your own trending images? Let’s find out.
What is the Viral Nano-Banana Trend?
Like any viral trend (throwback to Ghibli images), Gemini’s Nano banana trend is essentially creating your own 3D models with incredible likeness and consistency. Within two weeks since launch, Google’s AI app saw 23 million new users, with over 500 million images generated in the same period.
From photo to figurine style in just one prompt.
— Google Gemini App (@GeminiApp) September 1, 2025
People are having fun turning their photos into images of custom miniature figures, thanks to nano-banana in Gemini. Try a pic of yourself, a cool nature shot, a family photo, or a shot of your pup.
Here’s how to make your own 🧵 pic.twitter.com/e3s1jrlbdT
Another reason why the trend has boomed up, is Google’s decision to make the model accessible to both free and paid users. The only catch is that free users can generate or edit up to 100 images per day, while for subscribers, that limit goes further up-to 1,000 for a plan which starts from $19.99+ per month. Want to try out a few prompts yourself? Here’s a quick step-by-step tutorial.
Create Viral Nano Banana with Prompts
- To create your own 3D figurine model you can use the Gemini app or the official website.
- Upload a portrait or photo to the AI.
- Next, try out the prompt shared by Google on X : “Create a 1/7 scale commercialized figurine of the characters in the picture, in a realistic style, in a real environment. The figurine is placed on a computer desk. The figurine has a round transparent acrylic base, with no text on the base. The content on the computer screen is a 3D modeling process of this figurine. Next to the computer screen is a toy packaging box, designed in a style reminiscent of high-quality collectible figures, printed with original artwork. The packaging features two-dimensional flat illustrations.”
- Hit that ‘Generate’ button, and the model will (usually) return the results within seconds.
- If you feel that the result isn’t quite upto the mark, go ahead and tell what you want changed.
Apart from creating miniatured figurines, the app can also give your existing images different kind of edited results say – retro, artistic, comical/anime style, etc within a few minutes.
Adding onto the hype, many celebrities including actors, actresses, and even politicians jumped in to share their ‘creations’ using the nano banana model. On September 11, an AI model Seedream 4.0 by Tiktok’s owner Bytedance also made its debut claiming to have better performance than Gemini’s Nano Banana in both image generation and image editing.
It is interesting to see if ChatGPT could come up with another trend to maybe try and get back on the top of Apple’s App Store charts. Who knows, maybe Musk’s Grok could come up with something surprising, and make its debut in the trends?
