Google’s Gemini app has surged to 650 million monthly active users, a 200 million increase since July, according to the company’s Q3 earnings report. While still behind ChatGPT’s 800 million weekly users, the growth marks a significant leap forward for Google’s AI-powered assistant. The driving force behind this spike? The viral success of Nano Banana, Google’s image-editing tool that launched in August and quickly captured global attention. Josh Woodward, VP of Google Labs and leader of the Gemini app, attributed much of the user growth to Nano Banana’s popularity. “We’re seeing a very big demographic shift in the app,” he said in an interview with Business Insider. The tool has drawn in a younger audience, particularly users aged 18 to 34, and helped diversify the user base by bringing in more female users—a notable shift from the app’s previously male-dominated profile. For Google, this demographic shift is crucial. The company has long been concerned about younger users spending more time on platforms like TikTok, and the success of Nano Banana suggests that engaging, creative AI tools can help re-engage this group. The app’s international reach has also expanded rapidly, with one of its biggest viral moments originating in Thailand. An influencer created a 3D figurine of themselves using the tool, sparking a wave of interest that quickly spread to Vietnam, Indonesia, and beyond. Google is betting that users who come for a fun, shareable feature like Nano Banana will stay for the app’s broader capabilities. “We’re seeing users go from just using the image tool to trying other functions,” Woodward said. The goal is to turn Gemini from a simple assistant into a more powerful, task-driven “operator” that can handle complex, multi-step workflows. To achieve this, Google is advancing its vision for the next phase of Gemini, referred to as Gemini 2. The company has already introduced early versions of this future, such as Project Mariner, an AI agent designed to work in the browser, and a test version of “Agent Mode” within the app. However, Woodward acknowledged that current general-purpose agents are still limited—typically capable of handling just three to five tasks with a few tool use calls. The long-term goal is to build agents that can manage 10 or more tasks and tool interactions with high accuracy. “We’re on that journey,” he said. “There’s still a lot more to do.” To better understand user engagement, Google is refining how it measures success. A monthly active user is defined as someone who opens the app on Android, iOS, or the web and interacts with it meaningfully. The company excludes basic, low-effort actions like setting a timer. Looking ahead, Woodward envisions new metrics that track how many successful tasks a user completes in a day—potentially dozens or even hundreds. “The real goal is to help people get more done,” he said. “That’s what we’re really geared at.”