Season's Treatings

Every year, our relationships with partners old and new ignite our imaginations and drive us to push the boundaries of what’s possible in technology creative. To wrap up 2025, we wanted an extra special gift that everyone could enjoy – and a traditional gingerbread just wasn’t cutting it.

Not only did we send artfully presented IRL gingerbread dudes to our partners, we created a complementary digital world for them to explore.

When Google DeepMind released Gemini 3 Pro Image (aka Nano Banana Pro) in November, we immediately began experimenting. Built on the Gemini 3 Pro reasoning engine, the ability to combine high-fidelity, 4K image generation with real creative logic offers a tech playground. What we were most excited about was the possibility of combining this technology with real-world products.

We explored retail possibilities by combining supermarket product images from Tesco with text prompts. Users can select nostalgic faves like “silver pearls” or “foam shrimp,” and the system feeds these product shots as partial prompts to the Vertex AI Gemini API. We love how this transforms AI into a curator of reality, creating imaginative arrangements of real sweets rather than inventing new ones.

For us, there were two huge benefits to the latest Gemini Image model:

14-Input Unlock: it handles up to 14 visual references at once, enabling precise blending of multiple product images. This allows us to feed the model the exact visual data of multiple ingredient product images (the precise texture of a Tesco chewy gummies, the glint of a colourful sprinkle) alongside structural guides.

Deep Think Reasoning: it separates structure from texture, ensuring objects function realistically while allowing creative designs. It understands that a "banana gummy" selected as a "limb" must function structurally like an arm, rather than just appearing as a floating picture of a banana.

The model's temperature settings and generative capabilities ensure that no two gingerbread creations are identical, even with the same ingredients. This sweet spot between surprise and control captures the fun of AI-assisted creativity and creates a collectible quality. For an extra layer of delight, each gingerbread comes with a shoppable recipe for recreating at home – turning users’ creations into something tangible.

We’re so excited to see how we can continue to push AI from an experimental tool to an essential component of competitive retail strategy in 2026.