Gemini’s Nano Banana model has been the talk of the town for the last few days, with the latest model from Google leading to viral trends on social media. The model first started catching social media attention after it was used to create realistic 3D figurines by users, and it later led to retro-style images and ’80s-style saree looks.
Amid the viral trend on social media, IPS officer V.C. Sajjanar has warned on X (formerly Twitter) about jumping into trending social media topics and sharing personal information, which could lead to future scams.
The officer warned that being a little lax with such trends could lead to the bank accounts of innocent users ending up empty.
“Be cautious with trending topics on the internet! Falling into the trap of the ‘Nano Banana’ trending craze… if you share personal information online, such scams are bound to happen. With just one click, the money in your bank accounts can end up in the hands of criminals. Never share photos or personal details with fake websites or unauthorized apps,” Sajjanar wrote in a post on X.
“You can share your joyful moments on social media trends, but don’t forget that safety should be your top priority. If you step onto an unseen path, you’re certain to fall into a pit… Think twice before uploading your photos or personal information,” he added.
Sajjanar further noted that once data goes into fake websites, it becomes difficult to retrieve it and could potentially lead to some unsavory repercussions for the user.
Why Gemini’s Nano Banana trend could be risky
Apart from falling into the trap of sharing personal images and other data on unauthorized websites, there are a host of other data security risks associated with jumping into such social media trends.
For instance, big tech companies could train their AI models on the images uploaded by users. Google, for instance, trains on the conversations of users with Gemini by default, and users need to go through a few elaborate steps before they turn off the AI training.
However, despite that, AI companies could still opt to start training on user data. Anthropic, the maker of the Claude chatbot, for instance, recently announced that it will start training on the data of users from later this month if they don’t specifically choose to opt out of the process.
Most lay users may not understand these intricacies and could be handing off their personal data into the hands of big tech giants.
