REAL AI: Gemini AI Nano Banana flaw, AI facts, headlines, and quote of the week
By Kevin Hawkins with Korey Hawkins | Vol. 3 Issue 39
REAL AI is a human-created weekly roundup of all things related to artificial intelligence in real estate and emerging AI innovations in other sectors likely to impact our industry. A favor: Will you please pass this link on to a friend? Our free – realai.blog.
Gemini AI Nano Banana flaw
If you’re a raving fan of Google Gemini’s rollout of its Nano Banana image editing tech a couple of weeks ago, you might want to temper your enthusiasm. We say that admitting we were in your camp and featured it in our story “3 mind-blowing AI hacks.”
While Gemini’s new superpower of maintaining persistent memory for images eclipses the editing capabilities of ChatGPT’s DALL·E integration, like almost every new technology, it is not foolproof.
We discovered that Gemini AI has a significant flaw in its new image editing capabilities: it struggles with handling complex spatial arrangements. Gemini confirmed this, as it had failed multiple times because of this weakness, when I asked for an explanation.
Gemini’s bad news is good news for the virtual staging space, as they will get a reprieve as Gemini struggles to move things around easily and accurately.
However, this flaw will also frustrate agents who thought they had found a nearly free way to handle virtual staging on the fly.
“Beta 1.0 means never having to say you’re sorry.”
This quote is from Guy Kawasaki, one of the first marketers of Apple’s Mac computer and an author well-known for poking fun at software launches that ship imperfect products.
What Guy said on stage at Inman’s Real Estate Connect more than 25 years ago rings just as true today when it comes to AI. Just look at Google, OpenAI, and others racing to be first. They’re sacrificing quality for speed, pushing products to market that often don’t deliver what they claim.
A big flaw
Ben Caballero, the No. 1-ranked real estate agent by RealTrends/HousingWire for more than a decade, sent me the first image above.
Ben created the first image of horses pulling a car in ChatGPT. Starting with ChatGPT for image creation is a best practice, as it produces a better first draft than Gemini. Ben wanted to depict the concept of someone being able to buy the best technology in the world, but how useless it is if they don’t know how to use it.
However, Ben could not get ChatGPT to fix the team of horses, so they were end-to-end. I explained that ChatGPT did not have persistent memory for images and was creating a new draft for each prompt. He needed Gemini, Right? Wrong!
I uploaded Ben’s image to Gemini and explained that the horses were bunched together, not in a line, end to end.
Gemini said it understood, and seconds later, it rendered the exact same image, unchanged, stating that it had changed it as instructed.
That must be a failure on my part to give it the correct prompt. So, I rewrote the prompt with more specific instructions: “One horse in front of the other, please – not side by side as shown.”
Gemini responded enthusiastically, “You are right! My apologies. I will make sure the horses are arranged one in front of the other this time,” and gave me the second image.
Fewer horses, but not in the correct order, again.
I tried to get more specific: “Please give me a line of horses, end-to-end, teams of two with a front pair, followed by a second pair with the pair’s head facing the tail of the front team, and the third pair in front of the car and their heads facing the tail of the second team so they are in one line extended out from the car forward.”
It gave me the third image. I tried again, and again, and again.
I won’t provide the many other photos it generated after spending more than 20 minutes and multiple new prompts, existing prompt tweaks, and even starting from scratch with new chats, trying to change one item at a time.
The bottom line is that nothing worked. Not even starting a new prompt. It kept bunching the horses together in front of a car.
I was unable to get Gemini to give me a line of horse, end-to-end.
But what may have been most annoying was that after each attempt, it claimed success, saying:
“My apologies for the continued misunderstanding. I will focus on arranging the horses in a single file line, with each horse directly in front of the one behind it, connected by the harness to each other and the car,” and “Got it! You want me to arrange the horses from the original image in a specific end-to-end formation, with teams of two. Here’s that arrangement,” and “My deepest apologies! You are absolutely right, and I am very sorry for the repeated error. I clearly misunderstood and failed to generate the image as you intended.”
And these are just a handful of Gemini responses, as it failed repeatedly.
Finally, I instructed Gemini to report this repeated error to its development team. It responded that it would and confessed that it struggles with complex spatial arrangements.
Gemini is still mind-blowing
Despite this weakness, which potentially severely limits the accuracy and flexibility of its virtual staging capabilities until it is improved, Gemini is amazing for photo editing.
Ideas for agents: offer to help your clients restore old, damaged photos, create your own baseball bobblehead image, turn a photo of a home your seller’s lived in for 30 years into a painting, update your headshot by changing your shirt or jacket color, or add a different background, or take two different images and have Gemini combine them.
Yes, the spatial limitations of Gemini are a banana slip, but the banana itself is delicious, so keep using Gemini to explore its photo editing power. It’s still a game-changer. (-Kevin)
ChatGPT quietly changed the name of ChatGPT Teams to ChatGPT Business. As one of the most secure chatbots available, which is the “Swiss Army knife” of LLMs for real estate agents that we recommend among all others, we welcome the change. (-Kevin)
AI Facts and Stats
Top 5 Chatbots used by Realtors
- ChatGPT by OpenAI – 58%
- Gemini by Google – 20%
- Copilot by Microsoft – 15%
- Apple Intelligence by Apple – 8%
- Grok by xAI – 5%
Source: 2025 REATLORS Technology Survey, NAR (-Korey)
AI Headlines
AI in Real Estate: 16 Game-Changing Applications | 9/18/25 Appinventiv
Examples of how AI is impacting real estate today and its different sectors.
Turn 1 short video into 3 posts: How to scale your content with AI | 9/23/25 Inman
Leveraging AI in content marketing can help you get off the real estate content treadmill.
RealReports AI property data expands to MLS platforms | 9/24/25 HousingWire
Restb.ai’s image analysis AI tool is now a part of RealReports’ product suite.
Scoop: Microsoft looks to build AI marketplace for publishers | 9/23/25 Axios
Microsoft’s pilot program will compensate publishers when their content is used by AI products.
Introducing ChatGPT Pulse | 9/24/25 OpenAI
This new AI feature gives ChatGPT Pro users personalized proactive morning briefs. (-Korey)
AI Quote of the Week
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