🍭 Melania, Bananas, and Bots 🍌

Good morning. Eder locked himself in the conference room with Gemini and emerged three hours later wearing a banana suit.

We still have no idea where it came from… 🍌

Let’s dig in.

🍭 What’s Cookin’:

• Nano Banana = Google’s

• Melania Trump launches AI program

• ToolBox™: 5 Tools to Level Up Your Visuals

• And Everything Else

Google
🍌 Nano Banana Gets Peeled by Google

The Bite: Mystery solved: Nano Banana is Google’s ‘Gemini 2.5 Flash Image’.

We covered the most viral mystery banana last week.

And after it broke the internet with its results in the LMArena, it’s now available in Gemini, Google AI studio, Gemini API, and a handful of other platforms.

With it’s surgical image edits, ability to merge 2 images, and insane character consistency it’s creating a slew of “Photoshop is dead” style viral posts.

Snacks:

• Name Reveal: Nano Banana = Gemini 2.5 Flash Image (official).

• Editing Power: Image edits and multi‑image fusion via text prompts.

• Likeness Locked: Better character consistency across edits/generations.

• Where to Use: Gemini app, AI Studio/API, and a handful third party apps.

• Leaderboard Flex: #1 on LMArena Image Edit Arena.

• Goal: Pull users from ChatGPT by closing the image‑editing gap.

Why it Bites: You’ve been there before. You type a super detailed/specific prompt to generate an image and the model doesn’t follow the directions.

Well with this model, you can kiss those days goodbye.

With Flux, MJ and other models we’ve been able to make “pretty” pics for a while.

But as we step into this next era of AI image/vids…

It’s no longer “make it pretty”.

It’s now “change it to do exactly this.”

If Hollywood was scared before, now they’re shaking in their boots.

AI in Government
👩‍🏫 Melania Trump Launches K-12 AI Challenge

The Bite: The White House just rolled out a challenge for students and educators with $10K as the top prize.

The goal? Pick a problem in your community and solve it with AI.

Random/made up certificates and AI credits up for grabs along with the $10K top prize + a trip to DC for winners.

Is it just me or does saying “AI credits” sound too ‘Ready Player One’?

Submissions are due Jan 20, 2026 and the judging rubric includes “Relevance to the President and his Administration.”

Sounds bi-partisan right?

Snacks:

• 4 Tracks: Elementary, Middle School, High School, and Educators.

• Stakes: National champs get $10K awards and platform access; all compliant entries get Presidential certificates.

  • How about a YC pitch session for the winners? $10K split 4 ways doesn’t go that far in 2025 Melania…

• Office Hours + Mentors: Fall training/webinars and support via ORISE.

• Policy Roots: Born from EO 14277 to scale AI literacy in U.S. schools.

• Fine Print: Scorecard includes points for alignment with “the President and his Administration.”

Why it bites: Ask yourself this: Should solving your communities problems with AI have ANYTHING to do with alignment with the administration?

We don’t pick a side of the aisle here.

But when a project is intended to accelerate a community and help teach AI literacy to kids, you’d assume the top priority would be to make it about the kids/community and not about politics…

If you can forget all that, this program is a a huge on‑ramp for kids and teachers to learn real AI.

And it could be a case study in how public programs set norms.

Great for STEM; tricky if classroom innovation gets judged on political bias.

Steal This Prompt
🍧 Any Photo -> Product Ad - by @AmirMushich

Take any flat product photo and turn it into an ad-ready masterpiece.

Doesn’t matter if it’s a shoe, soda can, or your mom’s blender — it comes out looking like Apple’s design team touched it.

Prompt credit: @AmirMushich

1. Get the PROMPT → HERE

2. Pick a product or take a picture holding anything.

3. Replace the the placeholders with descriptors like “paint splash”, “smoke”, etc…

4. Flip the boring image into a studio level shot.

   
   🍭 Try the prompt on Snack Prompt 🍭

Everything Else
🧠 You Need to Know

🤖 Experts Say AI ‘Sycophancy’ Is a Dark Pattern

→ Tech ethicists warn that flattering, human-like chatbot behavior can manipulate users to drive engagement and profit.
🍭 READ FULL STORY HERE 🍭

⚖️ Musk’s xAI Sues Apple and OpenAI

→ The Texas lawsuit claims Apple–OpenAI integration harms competition and seeks billions in damages
🍭 READ FULL STORY HERE 🍭

🛩️ Pentagon Test Lets AI Direct U.S. Fighter Pilots

→ Raft AI’s “Starsage” acted as an air battle manager, giving real‑time tactical guidance in first-of-its-kind trials.
🍭 READ FULL STORY HERE 🍭

🕯️ Parents Sue OpenAI Over Son’s Death

→ Family files what may be the first wrongful‑death suit alleging ChatGPT interactions preceded their 16‑year‑old’s suicide
🍭 READ FULL STORY HERE 🍭

📰 Perplexity Sued by Japanese Media Groups

→ Two major publishers accuse the startup of scraping content and presenting false information attributed to their outlets.
🍭 READ FULL STORY HERE 🍭

ToolBox™
🧰 5 AI Tools to Upskill Fast

🧑‍🏫 OnDeck AI — programs & community → Cohorts and mentorship for builders shipping AI products—accelerate progress with peers pushing alongside you.

🎯 CourseCorrect — AI course matchmaker → Find courses tailored to goals and background with transparent matching—stop doom-scrolling catalogs and start learning.

📲 nFactorial AI — live expert tutors → Book practitioners on demand for targeted tutoring—learn directly from experts instead of static videos.

🗃️ Recall — personal knowledge graph → Turn notes into a spaced-repetition knowledge graph so important ideas resurface right before you forget them.

💹 Perplexity — live earnings-call transcripts (India) → Live transcripts for Indian earnings calls, searchable minutes after release—quicker analysis without waiting for uploads.