· Luca Moretti
Sora closed, Nano Banana stayed: AI images and video for a small business
OpenAI shut down Sora seven months after the Sora 2 app launched. Google’s image models kept shipping. What that means if you make product images with AI.
OpenAI unveiled Sora 2 with an iOS app on 30 September 2025. On 24 March 2026 it announced the end: the app closed on 26 April 2026 and the API on 24 September 2026. Anyone who built a workflow on it has had to move.
Google’s image models kept shipping
- Nano Banana (Gemini 2.5 Flash Image): 26 August 2025.
- Nano Banana Pro (Gemini 3 Pro Image): 20 November 2025.
- Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image): 26 February 2026.
The lesson for a small business
Keep your source material (product photos, brand colours, prompts that worked) in your own folder, not inside one tool. A model can disappear in seven months; your product shots should not disappear with it.
Label what is generated
Under the EU AI Act, generated or manipulated images, sound and video fall under transparency duties: people must be able to tell. Mark AI imagery in ads and on product pages where it could be mistaken for a real photo.