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🚨World Models, African Innovation, and Nano Banana Tricks You Can Try

September 29, 2025

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Global AI Highlights (last 3 days)

Amazon’s AGI shake-up
Karthik Ramakrishnan, VP leading Amazon’s artificial general intelligence (AGI) division, has stepped down. His exit raises questions about Amazon’s direction in the AGI race — especially as rivals like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic push forward aggressively.

Google’s “Nano Banana” sneaks into Photoshop
Google’s Gemini 2.5 Flash Image model (nicknamed Nano Banana) is now embedded in Adobe Photoshop’s beta. Through the Generative Fill tool, users can instantly generate or tweak images, blending Google’s AI power with Photoshop’s creative workflows.

Investors cool on AI hype
Big funds are no longer chasing short-term AI buzz. Instead, they’re shifting capital toward infrastructure, government-backed innovation, and longer-term AI bets — a signal that the AI market is maturing.

World models: the next frontier
DeepMind, Meta, and Nvidia are doubling down on world models — AI systems that simulate environments and understand spatial/temporal contexts. The goal: move past “text-only” intelligence toward richer, environment-aware AI.

🌍 African AI Updates

AI policy momentum across the continent
Many African governments now have national AI strategies in place, but the challenge has shifted from policy-writing to actual rollout — building infrastructure, training talent, and supporting local innovation.

Breaking language barriers
Orange is fine-tuning OpenAI’s models for African languages, helping close the gap where global models underperform due to lack of training data. A critical step in making AI genuinely useful for African populations.

Local data innovation
Researchers are pushing for African-led dataset creation in healthcare. By running themed challenges (like building diagnostic data for TB or malaria), local teams can reduce dependence on Western datasets.

Federated learning in African hospitals
A pilot study spanning eight African countries explored federated learning for TB diagnosis using chest X-rays. While promising, it highlighted hurdles like weak connectivity, privacy issues, and infrastructure gaps that must be solved for scale.

🛠 Practical AI Skills: How to Create Images with Google’s Nano Banana

Google’s Gemini 2.5 Flash Image model — playfully nicknamed Nano Banana — is a lightweight but powerful image generation tool that’s now available through the Gemini app, API, and even Photoshop’s beta.

Here’s how it works and how you can try it yourself:

🔎 What It Does

  • Text → Image: Type a prompt (“a futuristic Lagos skyline at sunset”) and get instant visuals.

  • Edit Existing Photos: Upload an image and instruct the model (“make the shirt red,” “blur the background”).

  • Blend Multiple Inputs: Merge two or more photos into a single stylized composition.

  • Fast Turnaround: Most generations complete in 1–2 seconds.

  • Built-in Safety: All outputs carry a hidden watermark (SynthID) to mark them as AI-generated.

⚙️ How It Works (Simplified)

  1. Input: Your text prompt + optional image(s).

  2. Model Magic: Uses diffusion techniques + Gemini’s world knowledge to generate or edit content.

  3. Output: Produces one or more candidate images for you to review, tweak, or regenerate.

📱 Quick Start (Gemini App)

  1. Install or update the Gemini app.

  2. Switch to Image Mode (or “Flash Image”).

  3. Upload a photo (optional).

  4. Enter your prompt:

    • “Turn this into a 3D cartoon figurine”

    • “Add a dreamy forest behind me”

    • “Change my outfit to futuristic armor”

  5. Tap Generate.

  6. Refine by giving follow-ups: “make the background darker”.

  7. Save and share your favorite result.

đź’» Developer Path (Gemini API / Google AI Studio)

from google import genai
from PIL import Image

client = genai.Client()
prompt = "Create a picture of my cat eating a nano-banana in a futuristic café"
image = Image.open("cat.png")

response = client.models.generate_content(
    model="gemini-2.5-flash-image-preview",
    contents=[prompt, image],
)

# Response contains multiple candidate images

This lets you integrate Nano Banana into apps — for ecommerce visuals, avatars, or marketing pipelines.

🎨 Prompting Tips

  • Be specific (style, mood, lighting).

  • Provide reference images if possible.

  • Iterate — refine instead of starting over.

  • Avoid contradictions (“make it both dark and bright”).

✅ Bottom line: Nano Banana makes professional-grade AI image generation lightning fast — whether you’re a designer in Photoshop, a casual creator on mobile, or a developer building with the API.