Google is quietly building an AI version of Canva inside Workspace — and Nano Banana could make it seriously useful

Google Pics lets you generate and precisely edit images using simple text prompts It will be integrated directly into Google Docs, Slides and Drive Pics is rolling out to Google AI Pro, Ultra and eligible Workspace customers Google has started rolling out Pics, a new AI-powered image creation and editing tool that looks like the company’s answer to Canva and even Adobe Express .

Canva became enormously popular by enabling ordinary people to produce good-looking graphics without needing professional design skills.

Google Pics is attempting something similar, but rather than giving you a huge library of templates and asking you to assemble a design yourself, it puts AI at the center of the entire process.

Pics isn’t as fully featured as Canva, at least from what Google has shown so far.

However, it’s included with Google AI Pro and Ultra subscriptions and selected Workspace business plans — and that could prove to be its biggest advantage.

All AI, no templates Pics starts with a prompt.

You describe what you want to create, perhaps a child’s birthday invitation, an event poster or a social media graphic, and the AI generates several versions for you to choose from.

You can then select individual objects or pieces of text and ask Pics to change them without regenerating the entire image.

Text can be edited, reformatted or translated while preserving the surrounding design, and images can be cropped for different formats or upscaled to 2K or 4K.

You can also request several changes at once and return to an earlier version if the results go wrong.

While some people will dislike how heavily Pics relies on generative AI, others may appreciate how much of the traditional design process it removes.

Instead of learning how to use layers, masks and selection tools, you can simply describe the change you want.

Google Pics is powered by Nano Banana, Gemini’s image generation and editing model.

You can see how it works in this video: Why Workspace changes the equation The biggest difference between Pics and Canva is that Pics isn’t being positioned only as a standalone design app.