It seems each major new AI image generator sparks a new viral trend that takes over the internet for a few days. With the launch of GPT‑4o back in March, it was Studio Ghibli-style images. Now with Google's Nano Banana, AKA Gemini 2.5 Flash Image, it's 3D figurines.
It isn't an entirely new trend. People had already displayed a penchant for creating action figures of themselves using GPT-4o. But Nano Banana appears to be capable of more detail and more sophisticated prompt adherence. Sometimes they're cute, and sometimes they're more than a little creepy. People have also discovered that they can turn static images of their 3D figurines into videos.
