If it's just the API you're interested in, Fal.ai has put Nano-Banana-Pro up for both generative and editing. A great deal less annoying to sign up for them since they're a pretty generalized provider of lots of AI related models.
Fal.ai is pay as you go and has the cost right upfront.
While we're on this subject of "Google has been stomping around like Godzilla", this is a nice place to state that I think the tide of AI is turning and the new battle lines are starting to appear. Google looks like it's going to lay waste to OpenAI and Anthropic and claim most of the market for itself. These companies do not have the cash flow and will have to train and build their asses off to keep up with where Google already is.
gpt-image-1 is 1/1000th of Nano Banana Pro and takes 80 seconds to generate outputs.
Two years ago Google looked weak. Now I really want to move a lot of my investments over to Google stock.
How are we feeling about Google putting everyone out of work and owning the future? It's starting to feel that way to me.
(FWIW, I really don't like how much power this one company has and how much of a monopoly it already was and is becoming.)
As others have noted, Google's got a ways to go in making it easier to actually use their models, and though their recent releases have been impressive, it's not clear to me that the AI product category will remain free from the bad, old fiefdom culture that has doomed so many of their products over the last decade.
> How are we feeling about Google putting everyone out of work and owning the future? It's starting to feel that way to me.
Not great, but if one company or nation is going to come out on top in AI then every other realistic alternative at the moment is worse than Google.
OpenAI, Microsoft, Facebook/Meta, and X all have worse track records on ethics. Similarly for Russia, China, or the OPEC nations. Several of the European democracies would be reasonable stewards, but realistically they didn't have the capital to become dominant in AI by 2025 even if they had started immediately.
I'd argue Google is evil as OpenAI (at least lately), but I otherwise generally agree with your sentiment.
If Google does lay waste to its competitors, then I hope said competitors open source their frontier models before completely sinking.
You might be better off using a dedicated upscaler instead, since many of them naturally produce sharper images when adding details back in - especially some of the GAN-based ones.
If you’re looking for a more hands-off approach, it looks like Fal.ai provides access to the Topaz upscalers:
Here's the Fal-hosted video endpoint: https://fal.ai/models/fal-ai/topaz/upscale/video
They also offer (multiple; confusing product lineup!) interactive apps for upscaling video on their own website - Topaz Video and Astra. And maybe more, who knows.
I have access to the interactive apps, and there are a lot of knobs that aren't exposed in the Fal API.
edit: lol I found a third offering on the Topaz site for this, "Video upscale" within the Express app. I have no idea which is the best, despite apparently having a subscription to all of them.
Or more likely https://www.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/~leojia/projects/motion_deblurri... for video