Scholarly now supports Nano Banana 2 Lite (Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite Image)
Nano Banana 2 Lite is now the default image model for Scholarly's AI Image Playground, chat image generation, and study-visual creation flows.
Scholarly now supports Nano Banana 2 Lite, Google's Gemini image model also exposed as gemini-3.1-flash-lite-image. It is now the default image model across Scholarly's image creation surfaces, including the AI Image Playground, images generated from chat, Story Books, AI Video visual generation, and the shared image tools that create illustrations for study materials.
Why We Added It
Students use image generation differently from a general design tool. Most requests are practical: a clearer diagram, a quick concept illustration, a clean study visual, or a reference-image edit that helps explain something from class.
Nano Banana 2 Lite is a strong fit for that everyday work. It is fast, efficient, and supports both text-to-image generation and image editing with reference images. That makes it useful when you want to turn a prompt, screenshot, handout, or rough idea into a study-ready visual without waiting on a heavier model for every attempt.
Where You Can Use It
AI Image Playground. Nano Banana 2 Lite is now the default model in the Playground. Open the model picker and you will also see GPT Image, Grok Imagine, and Nano Banana 2 if you want to compare styles.
AI Chat. When you ask Scholarly to generate or edit an image directly in chat, the default image route now uses Nano Banana 2 Lite.
Study-material generators. Flows that need illustrations, such as Story Books and AI Video visual generation, now use Nano Banana 2 Lite by default when they call Scholarly's shared image generation tool.
What Changed From GPT Image
Scholarly previously defaulted many image calls to GPT Image 2. GPT Image remains available where model choice is exposed, and it is still a good option when you want a different look or a second pass. The default is changing because Nano Banana 2 Lite gives Scholarly a faster, more efficient everyday image path while still supporting the reference-image editing workflows students expect.
That means the workflow stays the same:
- Describe the image you want.
- Optionally attach reference images.
- Generate one image, or compare multiple models in the Playground.
- Use the result in your notes, slides, videos, or study materials.
How to Try It
Open the AI Image Playground from Home or the New menu and generate a study visual. Nano Banana 2 Lite will already be selected by default. If you want to compare it with GPT Image, Grok Imagine, or Nano Banana 2, select multiple models before generating and Scholarly will create one result from each model side by side.
You can also ask chat directly: "make an illustration of the Krebs cycle for my notes" or "edit this diagram so the labels are easier to read." Scholarly will route the image work through the new default automatically.
This update is live for the image generation surfaces that support Scholarly's shared image model routing.
