Google might have been slow off the blocks in the AI race, but it very much seems to have hit its stride.
Google’s Gemini app has become the top free app on the App Store, pushing ChatGPT to second place. The rise in rankings comes after the release of the Gemini 2.5 Flash image generation model, which was named Nano Banana. Nano Banana has gone viral in recent days, with its AI figurine images mirroring the Ghibli trend which had caused ChatGPT’s usage to zoom.
On the Apple App Store, Gemini is currently number 1 in the list of free apps. It is followed by ChatGPT, Threads, X, Amazon Prime Video, and Google’s own search app. This is the first time that Google Gemini has hit the top spot.
What seems to have led to the surge in downloads for Gemini is its new image generation model. The model had been first tested on LMArena under the code name Nano Banana, and had wowed users with its abilities, especially at image editing. Google had later hinted that it was behind the model, with top executives including Sundar Pichai and Demis Hassabis sharing banana emojis on X, and had confirmed that it was behind the model. But Google’s had then doubled down its marketing efforts. It held a hackathon to get developers to build with Nano Banana. It also integrated Nano Banana within Gemini, and even created a bot on X that generated images if tagged with a prompt. All this, along with the model’s capabilities, seems to have pushed the model into the mainstream. A Google executive had said last week that Nano Banana had brought 10 million new users to Gemini.
Over the last few days, a trend for the creation of AI figurines has gone viral in many parts of the world including in India. This appears to have propelled the usage of Gemini even higher — these images can be made in Gemini with a simple prompt. Not too long ago, the Ghibli trend had similarly gone viral, and had led to ChatGPT multiplying its userbase manifold.
Google now seems to have a similar hit on its hands. There had been signs that Gemini was on the upswing — Gemini had marginally gained market share over ChatGPT over the last year, and last week, it had caught up with ChatGPT in searches on Google Trends. Gemini was also neck-and-neck with OpenAI among models that people consider using, with its demand having doubled in a year. And with Gemini now having a viral hit that’s put it to the top of the app charts, people certaintly are getting their first taste of a serious ChatGPT competitor. It remains to be seen if these people stick with Gemini, but Google certainly has managed to create a splash in the AI space over the last few months.