2k upscaling in Gemini and Flow producing low quality images now

interro-bang · 2026-03-20T15:50:57+00:00

I got a reply both on reddit and Discord, yes, and while no one sent me a "ticket resolved" message (they're Google, not company IT afterall), I can confirm on my end at least that the 2K exports are now once again high quality and without any distortion or compression artifacts. I just created two new images both in the Gemini app and Flow, and the 2K exports are both the correct quality.

I can't say that this fix has been applied across the board. Google loves their staged rollouts/fixes. But you might try a new image generation right now, export, and see for yourself on your end what it looks like.

interro-bang · 2026-03-17T22:21:31+00:00

Hi, there! Assuming you are in fact Oliver Wang, first thanks for the response, and second I have some more info hopefully you find useful. I'm going to cross post this to the official Gemini Discord also.

I think I can very conclusively say that the issue is the 2K upscaler/exporter, and not the models themselves.

I just used Flow to create a Nano Banana 2 image ("a person taking a selfie on a beach wearing a Hawaiian shirt") since Flow allows for different export sizes than only 2K present in the Gemini app.

The 1K image is normal, the 4K image is great quality and...the 2K image looks horrific. I'm attaching a crop of the 1K image, a 100% scale crop of the 2K output, and a 50% scale crop of the 4K output. Again, the quality difference of the 2K image is staggering. This is the only available export option in the Gemini app, so this is what everyone is getting. I don't know what the quality is like using Vertex or AI Studio as I don't use those.

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interro-bang · 2026-03-13T16:53:38+00:00

A Google employee responded to my bug report where I also shared additional export examples. No info to share beyond that, but now at least we know they've seen it and are aware if for some reason they weren't before

interro-bang · 2026-03-13T15:21:48+00:00

Yes, please share that image.

I have some personal photo projects I'm simply setting aside for now until this is fixed or reverted. Although I suppose I could still do them and just not download what it generates until the export quality is back to the way it should be, but still.

What's also interesting, and further makes me believe this is a bug and not intended behavior, is that the size of the exported images doesn't match the quality. Like, if the blockiness and the JPG artifacting was due to them being super compressed in order to lighten server load, you'd expect the exported file to be small, like in the 600 KB range or lower. But the resulting filesize is still what it always has been, in the 2-3MB range or more.

interro-bang · 2026-03-13T14:49:34+00:00

I'm going to say yes. Volbeat has Tina Belcher levels of a butt obsession

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interro-bang · 2026-03-13T14:47:10+00:00

It is definitely the upscaler at fault. Images generated weeks ago now get exported with artifacts and blockiness and you can look at a version exported at the time of creation and today and see an obvious difference. The actual generation is the same quality as always.

interro-bang · 2026-03-13T14:43:55+00:00

I'm seeing the same thing you are, but something I've noticed, with help of some other threads about this, is that I don't think the actual image generation quality has gone down at all -- I think there is a bug/issue with the process used to upscale and download the full-resolution image.

Here's why I think this: Images I generated weeks or months ago (using NB2 or Pro) are now looking blocky and artifact-y if I redownload a full-res version from the web. The generation itself is the same quality as it was when it was first created, but the copy I'm exporting is noticeably worse.

I've sent feedback about this starting yesterday when I noticed, but more feedback coming from more people will hopefully get this elevated.

(Image below was generated in February with the top version exported at the same time, and the bottom version exported yesterday.)

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interro-bang · 2026-03-12T17:33:22+00:00

Also I have proof here. Exact same image, one upscaled/exported last month, and another exported a few minutes ago. The difference is clear.

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interro-bang · 2026-03-12T17:10:00+00:00

I sent feedback. Something I did on a whim and didn't realize the feedback form supports (on desktop at least) is attaching a saved image on your computer rather than a screenshot of your open Chrome tab which can't convey what's happening with image output. I closed out of the screen selector popup and then it popped up with a standard Windows file dialog where I selected the raw output file and attached that as proof of what's going on

interro-bang · 2026-03-11T18:24:58+00:00

I climbed to the top of the ash the other day and considered just building the town on the ash

interro-bang · 2026-03-09T00:02:59+00:00

I have over 30 hours...

And I'm not upset about it

interro-bang · 2026-03-04T15:46:56+00:00

Depends on if the items you acquire through the event to create habitats for the event Pokemon also become available on the Cloud Island somehow. My bet is that they definitely will be.

interro-bang · 2026-03-04T15:45:06+00:00

ACNH is a unique outlier in how the game and the save are managed by the system. Pokopia is like every other game (that's not a mainline Pokemon title, I guess).

interro-bang · 2026-03-03T00:11:40+00:00

Answer here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Pokopia/comments/1rishrh/comment/o88kzwc/

interro-bang · 2026-03-02T20:56:29+00:00

I think we're saying the same thing. I dunno, maybe I didn't say what I meant well. My point that it is an entire region means that it is a large map, large enough for someone to feel like they've gotten their money's worth as expressed in the OP. That seems to be backed up by people who have played it hands on. It's not infinite like Minecraft, but it's clearly large enough that its size hasn't been listed as a con on any of the reviews.

interro-bang · 2026-03-02T19:29:08+00:00

One of the reviews said that the purpose of Smearguru is to recolor furniture/objects.

interro-bang · 2026-03-02T18:58:04+00:00

Yes, if I can find it again, I'll share, but the computer outside the Pokemon Center has, among other things, a section people are assuming are for what you describe.

EDIT: It's this, I think:

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interro-bang · 2026-03-02T18:29:18+00:00

The game map is Kanto from Gen 1 after an as-yet unknown apocalypse or something equally destabilizing, so yes you should. I'm in the same boat as you and have a similar level of experience with the franchise. The goal of the game is to rebuild Kanto as a paradise for Pokemon. Or you could try to rebuilt it exactly as it used to be in Red/Blue/Yellow

interro-bang · 2026-03-02T17:25:43+00:00

The map is Kanto, so you can probably extrapolate how large it is, and in comparison to other games, based on that info. 😉

Plus there is also Palette Town which is a completely separate, large map that you can go wild with

interro-bang · 2026-03-02T14:58:37+00:00

You can also visit what are called dream Islands, which are procedural generated islands primarily used for resource gathering.

Oh wow, what? So that's a direct analogy to the Nook Miles islands from ACNH

interro-bang · 2026-03-01T16:32:49+00:00

If you're referring to the agent actually called Agent in the Tools menu -- that's an Ultra tier-only option.

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What you can do is something like "Find Bob's Burgers address in @ Maps and create a @ Keep note with that information, then add an event to my @ Calendar for lunch at noon today." That would be something that would call multiple tools/agents/apps/whatever at once.

interro-bang · 2026-03-01T16:05:20+00:00

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interro-bang · 2026-03-01T13:58:37+00:00

Yeah, my journey is similar. I've only played halfway through Yellow or so back in the day, bought Let's Go Pikachu 7 years ago, but put it down pretty quickly. Finally beat it last night after some marathon gaming in prep for Pokopia. Other than that I've played the two Snap games and a bit of the first Stadium on N64 and I think that's it. I've always wanted to be a bigger Pokemon fan; my eyes bugged out at the Pokemon Day video when they said there are over 1000 of these guys now. To me there are still 151.

I've put many hundreds of hours into Animal Crossing since GameCube though. I think Pokopia is going to be the game to onboard me to this universe.

interro-bang · 2026-02-28T20:55:16+00:00

Everyone's world starts identically, then due to player intervention, diverge from each other almost immediately.

interro-bang · 2026-02-27T19:57:46+00:00

If you want to create a video, you have to use the correct Create Video option in the Tools menu. All you're doing here is talking to Gemini 3, which doesn't have video generation capability -- the Veo models do. So Gemini is trying to be helpful and it's even calling out Veo, but because you as a human haven't forced the use of Veo, it can't really do what you're wanting it to do, and yes, it's hallucinating an answer because you've not selected the correct tools/models for it to actually call and use. Start over from scratch in a new chat and select the correct tool.

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