The new top banana in AI image generation

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Good morning, {{ first_name | AI enthusiasts }}. When Google launched the original Nano Banana last August, it set the bar for AI image generation — now, the sequel is raising it.

The new Nano Banana 2 just reclaimed the text-to-image crown across leaderboards, while also effectively ending the tradeoff between top-tier quality and affordability in the process.

In today’s AI rundown:

  • Google’s Nano Banana 2 claims No. 1 at half the cost

  • OpenAI snags Meta’s $200M+ AI hire after 7 months

  • Create an AI Assistant with its own phone number

  • Pew study shows how teens are using AI

  • 4 new AI tools, community workflows, and more

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

GOOGLE

🍌 Google’s Nano Banana 2 claims No. 1 at half the cost

Image source: Google

The Rundown: Google just rolled out Nano Banana 2, the upgraded version of its viral image model with enhanced resolution, consistency, text rendering, and speed at half the price of its predecessor — taking the #1 spot on text-to-image leaderboards.

The details:

  • The model beat both NB Pro and GPT Image 1.5 for the No.1 text-to-image spot on Artificial Analysis and LM Arena, also coming in at No. 3 on editing tasks.

  • Output resolution scales to 4K across aspect ratios, with up to five characters and 14 objects staying visually consistent throughout a scene.

  • At ~7 cents per image, it undercuts both Nano Banana Pro and OAI’s GPT Image 1.5 by nearly 2x — while providing speed at Gemini Flash levels.

  • Nano Banana is now integrated as the default image generator across Gemini and Google’s tool ecosystem, with Pro still available for paid subscribers.

Why it matters: The Nano Banana models have been on the frontier of image gen since the original launch in August, and this latest version brings new SOTA capabilities at the speed and price points of a flash model. With the release, the tradeoff of having to choose between best quality and affordability appears to be on its way out.

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OPENAI & META

🔄 OpenAI snags Meta’s $200M+ AI hire after 7 months

Image source: Ruoming Pang on X

The Rundown: OpenAI pulled Ruoming Pang away from Meta’s Superintelligence Labs after barely seven months, according to The Information — the same AI infrastructure lead that Meta had previously poached from Apple with a reported $200M+ pay.

The details:

  • Pang jumped to Meta last summer during its all-out poaching spree, previously running Apple’s models group and helping shape Apple Intelligence.

  • OpenAI reportedly spent months courting Pang before he finally left, even after he’d assured colleagues that Meta’s infrastructure was on solid ground.

  • OpenAI also hired Riley Walz, the engineer behind viral projects like Jmail and Find My Parking Cops, to join a new team prototyping AI interfaces.

Why it matters: While the AI talent wars aren’t as intense as they were this summer, there is still plenty of movement underway — most of it coming from xAI and Meta. But the quick departures of some of the splashiest poaches in less than a year show that company fit and direction might ultimately matter more than the pure dollars.

AI TRAINING

☎️ Create an AI Assistant with its own phone number

The Rundown: In this guide, you’ll set up your own AI personal assistant that you can call from your phone — using ElevenLabs for the voice agent and Twilio for the phone number. The whole process takes about 10 minutes and is free to test.

Step-by-step:

  1. In Elevenlabs, go to Agents → New Agent → Personal Assistant. Pick a voice, time zone, and first message. Then, add your website and calendar to it

  2. Go to Twilio, create an account ($15 free credits), and buy a phone number (~$1). Copy the number, account SID, and auth token from the dashboard

  3. Back in Eleven Labs, go to Phone Numbers → Import from Twilio. Paste your SID, auth token, and phone number. Assign your agent and done

  4. Call the number. Your AI assistant picks up and can answer questions about your calendar, your business, whatever you put in the agent’s knowledge base

Pro tip: The knowledge base is static — great for business info. For live data, add a webhook to Make.com/n8n, so your agent can pull real-time calendar events.

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AI RESEARCH

📚 Pew study shows how teens are using AI

Image source: Pew Research

The Rundown: Pew Research Center published a new study investigating how teens use AI, finding that the age group leans heavily on the tech for school work, reporting massive AI-fueled cheating, but viewing its overall impact positively.

The details:

  • The survey of 1,458 U.S. teens and parents shows adoption at mainstream levels, with primary uses ranging from info, schoolwork, and purely for fun.

  • Around 60% of those polled believed AI-assisted cheating is widespread among their classmates, rising to 75% among teens who use the tech.

  • Teens tended to see AI as a personal positive, with responses including making life easier, learning, and efficiency, with negatives citing job or creativity loss.

  • 40% of parents reported never having a conversation about the tech with their child, with a disconnect in knowledge of their child’s chatbot use.

Why it matters: Sam Altman recently said that this generation of kids will grow up in a world where AI’s intelligence and use will just be normal. But current teens are caught in an awkward moment where both the education system and society are struggling to adapt to the change, bringing both serious challenges and massive opportunities.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

  • 🤖 Scrunch – See how AI interprets your site, run a free audit, and unlock the new way to reach customers*

  • 🎆 Nano Banana 2 – Google’s new image generation model

  • 💠 Arrow 1.0 – QuiverAI’s top-ranked SVG generation model, now in public beta

  • ⚙️ Cursor Agents – Virtual computer control to build, test, and ship code

*Sponsored Listing

📰 Everything else in AI today

Anthropic’s Dario Amodei released a statement rejecting Pentagon’s ‘final offer’ to allow Claude’s safeguards to be removed, saying threats “do not change our position.”

QuiverAI emerged from stealth and opened public beta access to Arrow 1.0, an SVG model that hit No. 1 on Design Arena’s SVG leaderboard just one day after launch.

Nous Research open-sourced Hermes Agent, an OpenClaw-style agent that lives on Telegram, Slack, Discord, and CLI — learning and building reusable skills over time.

Burger King is rolling out an OAI-powered chatbot called “Patty” inside employee headsets, tracking whether workers say “please” and “thank you” as a coaching tool.

Cursor upgraded its cloud agents with their own virtual machines and desktop control, letting them build, test, and validate code autonomously before shipping PRs.

COMMUNITY

🤝 Community AI workflows

Every newsletter, we showcase how a reader is using AI to work smarter, save time, or make life easier.

Today’s workflow comes from reader Jamie T. in Massachusetts:

“My daughter is having trouble learning to read, so I had Claude create an app to help. I gave it the feedback I was getting from her teachers on what needed improvement, and it created a fun speaking app with colors and themes catered to her tastes.

It has 3 games around spelling and word/letter recognition. It even counts “stars” that equate to correct answers, and each game has a streak counter, too. I’ve already edited the words a bit, and I can continue to do so as she improves. Repeating the sounds the computer makes helps too! It’s an HTML app, so she can use it on a phone, PC, or tablet, so it’s all touch-screen fun for her!”

How do you use AI? Tell us here.

🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — the humans behind The Rundown

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