What Google Cloud announced in AI this month

This month, Google Cloud AI buzzing with the news of AP2, the Agent Payments Protocol, an open protocol developed with 60+ leading payments and technology companies. AP2 is a blueprint for interoperable, AI-native commerce, designed to work seamlessly as an extension of the Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol and Model Context Protocol (MCP).

We’ve also seen “bananas” momentum with our generative media models, especially through nano-banana, or Gemini 2.5 Flash Image. Let’s dive in!

What Google Cloud announced in AI this month

• Building next-gen visuals with Gemini 2.5 Flash Image (aka nano-banana) on Vertex AI: We announced native image generation and editing in Gemini 2.5 Flash (aka nano-banana) to deliver higher-quality images and more powerful creative control. Gemini 2.5 Flash Image is State-of-the-Art (SOTA) for both generation and image editing. For creative use cases, this means you can create richer, more dynamic visuals and edit images until they’re just right.

• Powering AI commerce with the new Agent Payments Protocol (AP2): We announced the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), an open protocol developed with leading payments and technology companies to securely initiate and transact agent-led payments across platforms. The protocol can be used as an extension of the Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol and Model Context Protocol (MCP). In concert with industry rules and standards, it establishes a payment-agnostic framework for users, merchants, and payments providers to transact with confidence across all types of payment methods.

• The ROI of AI: How agents are delivering for business: The AI story is evolving. According to our 2025 ROI of AI Report, for the 52% of executives who report their organizations are now deploying AI agents in production, this represents a fundamental shift in how business gets done.
• AI agent security: How to protect digital sidekicks (and your business): The promise of AI agents is immense. Powerful software that can plan, make decisions, and accurately act on your behalf at work? Yes please. But what if your digital assistant goes rogue? Without robust, flexible security in place, an AI agent could leak sensitive company data, cause a system outage, and even expose your business to security threats.
• Scaling high-performance inference cost-effectively: GKE Inference Gateway is generally available, and we are launching new capabilities that deliver even more value. This underscores our commitment to helping companies deliver more intelligence, with increased performance and optimized costs for both training and serving. To learn more and get started, visit our AI Hypercomputer site.

News you can use:

• Agent Factory Recap: Keith Ballinger on AI, The Future of Development, and Vibe Coding: In Episode #6 of the Agent Factory podcast, Vlad Kolesnikov joined Keith Ballinger, VP and General Manager at Google Cloud, for a deep dive into the transformative future of software development with AI. We explore how AI agents are reshaping the developer's role and boosting team productivity.

• Announcing the new Practical Guide to Data Science on Google Cloud: We've designed our new guide for practitioners looking to use Google Cloud’s capabilities across BigQuery, Vertex AI, and Google Cloud Serverless for Apache Spark. We’ll show you how to use an AI-first approach in your data science workflows, use previously untapped unstructured and multimodal data, and achieve new levels of efficiency.
• Automate app deployment and security analysis with new Gemini CLI extensions: We’re closing the gap between your terminal and the cloud with a first look at the future of Gemini CLI, delivered through two new extensions: security extension and Cloud Run extension:
  • /security:analyze performs a comprehensive scan right in your local repository, with support for GitHub pull requests coming soon. This makes security a natural part of your development cycle.
  • /deploy deploys your application to Cloud Run, our fully managed serverless platform, in just a few minutes.

Stay tuned for monthly updates on Google Cloud’s AI announcements, news, and best practices. For a deeper dive into the latest from Google Cloud, read Gimasys weekly updates