15 Sep 2025: Unless you are living under a rock, you either by now have tried the Google Nano Banana and the viral vintage saree AI (artificial intelligence) trends or at least searched them on the internet out of curiosity after reading about or coming across them somewhere in the digital space.
The “Nano Banana” trend refers to a viral AI photo-editing feature powered by Google’s Gemini Nano model, which transforms user selfies into hyper-detailed 3D figurine – like portraits – often styled with glossy plastic skin, big expressive eyes, and cartoonish proportions. While exploring the Gemini Nano Banana tool, users started another AI-powered trend of generating retro saree images.
The vintage saree AI-generated portraits feature photos of users – mostly women – turned into elegant images showing them in traditional sarees, often in stylised cinematic or vintage backdrops.
As usual, with any AI trend comes concern about safety and privacy of our photos.
How safe is Gemini Nano Banana tool?
Invisible watermark: SynthID
While tech companies like Google and OpenAI (maker of ChatGPT) offer tools to safeguard user-uploaded content, it’s ultimately our own safety practices – and the intent of those accessing the images – that determine how likely the content is to be misused, modified without consent, or falsely attributed.
Google’s Nano Banana images carry an invisible digital watermark (SynthID), plus metadata tags, which are meant to identify content as AI-generated.
“All images created or edited with Gemini 2.5 Flash Image include an invisible SynthID digital watermark to clearly identify them as AI-generated. Build with confidence and provide transparency for your users,” information on aistudio.google.com reads.
While there always is a concern over AI-generated images looking too real, making photos prone to deepfakes, the SynthID digital watermark – even though not visible to naked eye – can confirm that AI played a role in creating or editing the content when analysed with specific detection tools, according to spielcreative.com.
This gives individuals and platforms a method of verifying an image’s origin.
However, the detection tool for that watermark is not yet publicly available. So while the watermark exists, most everyday viewers cannot verify it, as per a Tatler Asia report.
Watermarking at first sounds like a noble and promising solutions but its real-world applications fail from the onset when they can be easily faked, removed or ignored, a report by The Wired quotes Ben Colman, CEO of AI-detection startup Reality Defender.
Some experts think watermarking can help in AI detection but its limitations need to be understood. Nobody thinks watermarking alone will be sufficient,” The Wired quotes Hany Farid, a professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information who thinks improving upon the tool and using it with a combination of other technologies can help make it harder to make convincing fakes.
How to keep your photos safe
Be selective about what you upload: As with any AI tool, what you get out is only as safe as what you put in. Avoid sensitive photos (private, intimate, or high-value personal identifiers) as much as possible.
Strip metadata: Before uploading, details like remove location tags, device information etc. This can help in preventing leakage of unintended information.
Privacy settings: It is always ideal to use strong privacy settings on apps and social media platforms. Controlling who can see your images can prevent content from being misused or getting accessed by fraudsters. Be cautious before sharing widely as once shared publicly, images can be copied, altered, used out of context.
Retain copies: Keep your original image or prompt backup so you notice changes or misuse.
Watch for terms & consent: Understand whether uploading gives the platform rights over your image, whether it can be used in model training etc.
Summary : While AI-generated portraits gain popularity, experts warn of privacy and misuse risks. Meanwhile, Google’s Gemini Nano draws attention, and vintage saree fashion trends continue to captivate young buyers.