When AI goes bananas

We look at Google's silly-sounding but convincingly capable AI image generation model. Plus a host of visual stories on everything AI in Asia.

Read from your browser The Prompt Welcome to The Prompt, your Monday dive into the world of AI that puts Asia front and center. From Big Tech's power players to the region's scrappy disruptors, we cover it all. Want full access to all our AI reporting? Subscribe to us here. Hello Betamax, AI went bananas last week. Literally. Almost everyone in my tech circle was having fun with Nano Banana, Google's latest image generation and editing model. It quickly rose to the top of LMArena's leaderboard, where people pit two AI models and vote for the best results without knowing which is which. Nano Banana - or technically Gemini 2.5 Flash Image - won by a long shot, with over 2.5 million votes. Our in-house designer tested it, and here's the result. Any thoughts? Of course, when there's hype, there are opportunists. One example is a website named Nanobanana.ai. It has no ties to Google at all and is clearly just a wrapper around Google's model. Still, it's enjoying its place at the top of internet searches for the keyword "nano banana." Gemini has always been good at editing images, as demonstrated by its previous version in March. But what makes it different this time around is how Nano Banana can better maintain the appearance of a character or object across multiple edits, essentially remembering details instead of generating entirely new things every time. Another fun use case of Nano Banana that many people have been messing around with is merging multiple images together. You can try this out yourself using Google's own template app in its AI Studio. And of course it didn't take long before someone used the model to put Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg together in one very popular scene of the Breaking Bad TV series. Bananas aside, this week's issue features three visual stories that we scraped together to help you understand Asia's AI landscape better. These cover topics from the key AI startups in India and Southeast Asia to the brilliant Asian minds behind Big Tech's foundation models. Consider this your weekly fruit basket of insights. Glenn Kaonang, journalist TOP AI READS FROM OUR DESK 1️⃣ Talent goldmine, no titans: India's AI gap on the global map Despite having no shortage of AI talent, India has yet to produce a dominant player in the global AI space. For many Indian startups in the segment, expanding to the US is often seen as good enough. 2️⃣ The Asian brains forging AI models at OpenAI, Google, Meta Amid the AI rush, scientists are making headlines. Companies like Google and Meta are poaching each other's best talent in the race to achieve artificial general intelligence. The twist? Most of these scientists are of Asian origin, as this piece maps out. 3️⃣ The key startups reshaping Southeast Asia's AI landscape The Silicon Valley playbook doesn't seem to matter much when it comes to AI. As we explored in this landscape map, many AI startups in Southeast Asia focus on building lasting businesses rather than chasing unicorn valuations. WHAT WE THINK Our quick take on the AI news, what it means, why it matters, and where it might be headed next. 1️⃣ Anthropic's browser-using AI plays it defensive Most daily work now happens in web browsers, creating opportunities for AI companies to capitalize on this behavior. US-based Anthropic recently released a preview of a Chrome extension that allows its LLM, Claude, to navigate browsers and handle tasks like summarizing Google Docs comments or filling out web forms. While browser-using AI offers clear utility, it raises significant security concerns. Prompt injection attacks - the AI equivalent of phishing - can trick AI systems into taking harmful actions without users' knowledge. Anthropic has implemented safeguards, including asking for confirmation before taking actions, but balancing usefulness with security might be challenging. This development reflects the broader trend of AI integration into everyday digital workflows, where convenience and security considerations must be carefully weighed against each other. 2️⃣ Perplexity's attempt to create a win-win situation for the web Perplexity just threw US$42.5 million at a problem everyone saw coming. After months of publishers screaming "stop stealing our content," the AI startup is now offering an 80% revenue share from its Comet Plus service. Comet Plus is basically a US$5 subscription that gives users premium access to partner news sites while letting Perplexity use that content to answer user questions. It's the company's attempt to create a "business model for the AI age" where publishers get paid for human visits, AI citations, and agent actions. It's also Perplexity's way of saying it's been freeloading the web this whole time, I suppose. Whether this actually fixes the fundamental problem of AI companies cannibalizing web traffic remains to be seen. STANDOUT AI BETS IN ASIA We highlight top AI deals in the region and their impact. 1️⃣ SG's Red Dot Analytics raises pre-series A round led by Granite Asia Red Dot Analytics develops AI and digital twin technology for data centers, helping them operate more efficiently. The deal underscores how the data center industry is opening its door to solutions that can help it face the sector's growing electricity demand. 2️⃣ Peak XV leads $8m series A in Indian AI sales platform WizCommerce develops an AI-powered sales and ecommerce platform for wholesale distributors. The funding points to the continued increase of AI adoption in the ecommerce sector. WHAT'S BUZZING? We zero in on the AI hot-button issues sparking chatter right now. 1️⃣ "Just installed an MCP that gives ChatGPT, Claude, and Cursor a shared memory," Tom Crawshaw writes on X. The thread breaks down the user's experience using Supermemory, a tool that allows people to share memories across AI apps like ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, and many more that support the Model Context Protocol. Now that it's common for people to juggle between AI apps, tools like this could help smoothen the user experience. 2️⃣ "Continuing the journey of optimal LLM-assisted coding experience," Andrej Karpathy writes on X. The post captures Karpathy's multilayered AI coding workflow. He uses Cursor for 75% of the work, Claude Code for larger chunks, and GPT-5 Pro for the trickiest bugs. His insight about the era of "post-scarcity code" - casually generating and deleting thousands of lines of ephemeral debugging code - perfectly captures how AI is fundamentally changing how people code. EVENTS HAPPENING You can also check out a curated list of trending tech events over here and Tech in Asia's signature events here. Product Leaders Roundtable | September 04 At our exclusive roundtable with 8x8, leaders from Coffee Meets Bagel, Endowus, Wise, and more will be sharing their playbooks. We'll be diving deep into the questions that matter: How do you make the handoff between in-app chat and WhatsApp seamless? What are the must-ask questions for any new API vendor to avoid future headaches? Which "nice-to-have" customer experience feature will become a "must-have" next year? Our final seats are reserved for leaders ready to share their insights and solve these challenges together. Register your interest. From idea to global scale with vibe coding | September 10 Vibe coding is the hidden edge separating startups that scale from those that stall. Join Byterover co-founder and CEO Andy Nguyen at AMPED 2025 Vietnam on September 10 as he reveals how vibe coding is reshaping AI-native workflows and why adoption signals speed and risk for founders and VCs. The event is almost at capacity! Register for the waitlist to lock in your chance to attend. Connection Hub at TIA Conference | Oct 22–23 – Jakarta Stop networking. Start dealmaking. Connect with top VCs, corporates, and experts in curated 1:1 sessions at Tech in Asia Conference, powered by HUB.ID Komdigi. Each meeting is pre-scheduled to ensure relevance and high-impact results. Slots are extremely limited – apply now to secure your session and fuel your startup's growth here. That's it for this edition - we hope you liked it! Do also check out previous issues of the newsletter here. See you next time! ADVERTISE | SUBSCRIBE | HIRE | FIND JOBS P.S. Don't miss out on the biggest tech news and analysis. Add newsletter@techinasia.com to your address book, contacts, or safe sender list. Or simply move us into your inbox. Tech in Asia thanks our partners for supporting our newsletters. Sponsorship has no influence on editorial content. Too many emails? Switch to a different frequency or get new content through our preference center, or unsubscribe. You can also break our hearts and remove yourself from all Tech in Asia emails over here. Copyright © 2025 Tech in Asia, All rights reserved. 13A Neil Rd, Singapore 088810 A member of The Business Times.