Neutral Expression to Genuine Smile

14 models were given the same image and edit instruction, and the community voted blind on which outputs looked best. How it works

Blind Vote This Challenge

Winning image by Nano Banana for Neutral Expression to Genuine Smile

#1 — Nano Banana

Edit instruction

{
  "action": "image_edit",
  "reference": "uploaded neutral portrait",
  "change": "Warm genuine Duchenne smile: lips curved up, slight natural teeth, soft eye crinkles, subtle cheek raise",
  "details": "Realistic smiling skin (dimples if present, soft cheek shadows), slightly brighter eyes; keep exact eye shape/color/iris",
  "preserve_exact": "Face identity/structure, eyes/nose/lips/eyebrows, hair, skin texture/pores/freckles, makeup, clothing, head pose, background, lighting, shadows, framing",
  "no_changes": "No face shape change, no new features, no gaze shift, no hair/clothing/lighting/background edits",
  "style": "Ultra-photorealistic 8K portrait, sharp face focus, natural soft lighting, realistic skin glow"
}

Voters were asked to judge by Identity preserved Natural smile No geometry changes

Challenge Rankings

14 models

#	Model	Price	¢/img	Speed	Elo
1	Nano Banana Google	$$	3.9¢		1278
2	Nano Banana Pro Google	$$$	6.7¢		1274
3	GPT Image 1.5 OpenAI	$	0.9¢		1270
4	Seedream 4.5 ByteDance	$$	4¢		1245
5	Grok Imagine Image Pro xAI	$$$	7¢		1240
6	Seedream 5.0 Lite ByteDance	$$	3.5¢		1234
7	Grok Imagine Image xAI	$$	2¢		1232
8	Qwen Image Edit 2511 Alibaba	$$	3¢		1228
9	Nano Banana 2 Google	$$	2.2¢		1221
10	FLUX.2 [pro] Black Forest Labs	$$	1.5¢		1192
11	FLUX.2 [max] Black Forest Labs	$$	3¢		1185
12	Wan 2.6 Alibaba	$$	3¢		1185
13	Seedream 4.0 ByteDance	$$	3¢	—	1184
14	Reve Image 1.0 Reve AI	$$	4¢		1107

Google's Nano Banana leads the challenge with 1278 Elo and a 73.6% win rate, outperforming its more expensive Pro counterpart despite a 72% faster generation time. GPT Image 1.5 closely trails the leaders at 1270 Elo, offering the highest value as the only budget-tier model in the top three while maintaining a 71.0% win rate.