In reality, I was trying to prove to a friend how awesome Google's new image model, Gemini, was, and then I realized it wasn't possible to easily try it out. The tech is mind-blowing, but getting to it is a puzzle—I mean, a maze. It's hidden away in developer consoles, cloud projects, and API waitlists. It's absurd to have to know how to manage a server to simply create a picture. This is where the idea for Nano Banana came to life. I simply wanted to create the 'Play Button' for this engine. All the complicated settings were taken away, and a simple no-login wrapper was formed. At the time, it was for my personal use so I wouldn't have to log into Google Cloud each time I wanted to create something, and it appears thousands of people were looking for the same doorway.