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It began with chiffon sarees, retro filters, and golden-hour glows. Now, Instagram’s latest obsession—the Gemini AI saree trend—turns ordinary selfies into nostalgic ’90s Bollywood-style portraits.
The tool itself comes from Google’s Gemini 2.5 Flash Image model, though the internet knows it by its meme-ified nickname: “Nano Banana.” Originally a placeholder name inside Google, it stuck after going viral and is now shorthand for both the AI tool and the edits it spawned. Built into the Gemini app, the model is lightweight and fast enough to run on phones, turning ordinary selfies into Bollywood-style glamour shots. Think Yash Raj nostalgia meets Pinterest mood-board energy, with chiffon sarees, retro filters, and cinematic flair stitched together by algorithms.
If it feels like déjà vu, that’s because the internet has a history of falling for these AI makeovers. From ChatGPT-fuelled experiments to TikTok and Instagram’s Studio Ghibli filter that turned photos into anime stills, every few months a new trend takes over, equal parts dazzling and uncanny.
The saree edits are undeniably eye-catching — billowing drapes, textured backdrops, cinematic grain. But with the wow factor comes unease.
As more people feed personal photos into these tools, the conversation is shifting: how much is too much when it comes to trading privacy for aesthetic play?
Take the case of content creator Jhalak Bhawnani. In a now-viral reel, she described how Gemini’s saree version of her photo revealed a mole on her arm — a detail true to her but not visible in the original image she uploaded.
“I generated my image, and I found something creepy,” she said in her post. “A trend is going viral on Instagram where you upload your image on Gemini with a prompt, and Gemini converts it into a saree… I tried it last night, and I found something very creepy about it.”
For many, her experience confirmed fears about AI “knowing too much”, raising questions about privacy, inference, and how much data is being picked up from seemingly harmless uploads.
Adding fuel to the debate is another emotional AI trend circulating on social media — users posting images of themselves hugging their 10-year-old selves.
Online users have responded to these hyperrealistic, AI-stitched visuals, expressing both admiration for their creativity and unease about the blurring lines between reality and AI-generated nostalgia.
Experts, too, are weighing in. IPS officer CV Sajjanar has already warned users to be cautious: “Be careful with trending topics on the internet! Falling into the trap of the ‘Nano Banana’ craze can be risky. Sharing personal information online can lead to scams. With just one click, the money in your bank accounts can end up in the hands of criminals,” he noted in a public advisory.
To generate these saree images, users typically upload a clear selfie, sometimes enter descriptive prompts (like “chiffon saree, Bollywood 90s”), and allow the AI access to process the photo. The risk lies in what happens behind the scenes—metadata from photos, facial features and other biometric patterns could in theory be stored or misused.
The Gemini AI saree trend is hardly the first time digital culture has embraced aesthetics with underlying risks. From the AI Yearbook Challenge (which gave people retro ’90s-style yearbook portraits, complete with lockers, cheesy smiles, and prom-night lighting) to AI Time Travel filters that aged people into Victorian or Renaissance characters, each wave of virality has brought both joy and concern.
More recently, TikTok and Instagram saw the rise of the Studio Ghibli AI trend, where users’ photos were transformed into dreamy, anime-style stills inspired by Hayao Miyazaki’s films.
Before that, the AI Pixar Filter turned selfies into wide-eyed, Disney-like avatars, while the AI Barbie Selfie Generator flooded timelines with bubblegum-pink, poster-ready portraits during the Barbie movie release.
What sets the Gemini AI saree apart, though, is its deeply local cultural context — the saree, a symbol of Indian tradition, reimagined by AI into an Instagram-ready fantasy.
In many ways, the trend is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it taps into the collective nostalgia of Bollywood and Indian fashion; on the other, it raises questions about privacy, ownership, and how much of ourselves we’re handing over to algorithms in the name of fun.
For now, the conversation online is split. Some hail the Gemini AI saree edits as harmless entertainment and a way to reimagine themselves in another era, while others warn it’s yet another reminder that in the age of AI, even nostalgia comes with fine print.
