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Generating Christmas cards using Nano Banana yet?
It’s been roughly a month since Nano Banana Pro came out, and no competitor has gotten even close to it.
1 month of 2025 in AI is equivalent to 1 light year, so it’s surprising Nano Banana Pro has held reigns for this long.
Until now.
OpenAI just announced GPT Image 1.5, and the BENCHMARKS are too good.
On paper it has currently become the best model beating Nano Banana Pro (”gemini-3-pro-image” in the screenshot) and I refuse to believe it so I put it to test.
But before that, here’s what happened in AI this week:
News News News:
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Image 1.5
OpenAI dropped their new model GPT Image 1.5 this week, much earlier than initially expected due to the code-red situation.
The new model delivers 4x faster generation speeds, 20% cost reduction, and stronger prompt adherence.
It is now available globally on ChatGPT where it lives in a new tab on the left sidebar, and via the API.
The Tests
OpenAI claims the model is good at being able to edit images, change specific elements in a photo like clothing or hairstyle, changing aspect ratios, generating stylized photos, etc.
But every model claims the same thing and is very much capable of doing it well, so we put it through some trickier examples and put it in comparison.
Test 1: Math Problem
This one has always been tricky. Gave both models a sample image with a few math questions in it.
Prompt: Solve these problems with messy handwriting. Keep the original questions.
Results:
Image 1.5 is definitely faster, but not the fastest. Nano Banana Pro was quicker.
Image 1.5 adhered to the instruction better because it made the handwriting messy and kept the questions. Nano Banana Pro went 1 step further and made it feel like a notebook.
Honestly, I’m torn because I like both outputs.
If I had to pick at gunpoint, I’d choose Nano Banana Pro
Test 2: Concert Poster
Text heavy. There’s been major improvements on this over the last 1-2 months.
Prompt: “Create a Lollapalooze India 2026 poster…”
Results:
Easy winner in Nano Banana Pro.
It pulled up the actual lineup this year and put it together.
GPT 1.5 threw together a bunch of artists, some of who have never even been to India.
Design wise Nano Banana Pro got it spot on.
Kudos to Image 1.5 for getting everyone’s spellings right though 🌚
Test 3: Facial Expressions
Even Nano Banana Pro struggles with it to this day.
Prompt: “Create a 3×3 grid featuring a…”
Results:
Image 1.5 was very fast. Almost as if this is its strength.
And that might just be the case.
Nano Banana Pro didn’t even bother sticking to the 3x3 layout, generated more emotions than asked for.
OpenAI’s claims are right - Image 1.5 does adhere to instructions better.
The emotions itself: Image 1.6 takes the cake.
Nano Banana’s emotions seem a lot more subtle, hence making it hard to differentiate and recognize the right emotion.
Image 1.5 makes it very clear and I prefer it that way.
My take
I love Image 1.5.
OpenAI has been lagging on the media front for quite some time but they are finally back at the top. I don’t expect them to stay there for long because Google still has the edge. ( cough cough Google Photos and Google Drive)
OpenAI is also leaning into the fun aspect of it. Check out all the different templates on chatgpt.com/images and play around with it. Something like this:
I am very excited about Image and Video generation capabilities going into 2026. I think the endgame for LLM improvements is gonna end somewhere there.
Coding, text and search are gonna improve only marginally from here. Image and Video - still a long way to go. But we’ll get there.
Don’t forget how far we’ve come since Jan 2025. The rate of improvements this year are huge and we’re carrying this momentum into the new year.
Recap soon. Reply with what you’d like to see and we’ll feature it in the next edition.
Until then,
Vaibhav 🤝🏻
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