# Banana100: Breaking NR-IQA Metrics by 100 Iterative Image Replications with Nano Banana Pro

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.03400 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.03400/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Multimodal and embodied agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 44 of its 69 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Apr 2026.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [Multimodal and embodied agents](https://mlsanity.com/agents/multimodal-and-embodied-agents/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 44)

- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [MUSIQ: Multi-scale Image Quality Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.05997/) (2021)
- [Qwen-Image Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.02324/) (2025)
- [Exploring CLIP for Assessing the Look and Feel of Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.12396/) (2022)
- [MANIQA: Multi-dimension Attention Network for No-Reference Image Quality Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.08958/) (2022)
- [Q-Align: Teaching LMMs for Visual Scoring via Discrete Text-Defined Levels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.17090/) (2023)
- [NIMA: Neural Image Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.05424/) (2017)
- [KonIQ-10k: An ecologically valid database for deep learning of blind image quality assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.06180/) (2019)
- [Blind Image Quality Assessment Using A Deep Bilinear Convolutional Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.02665/) (2019)
- [Blind Image Quality Assessment via Vision-Language Correspondence: A Multitask Learning Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.14968/) (2023)
- [Seedream 4.0: Toward Next-generation Multimodal Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.20427/) (2025)
- [TOPIQ: A Top-down Approach from Semantics to Distortions for Image Quality Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.03060/) (2023)
- [Deep Neural Networks for No-Reference and Full-Reference Image Quality Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.01697/) (2016)
- [From Patches to Pictures (PaQ-2-PiQ): Mapping the Perceptual Space of Picture Quality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.10088/) (2019)
- [Massive Online Crowdsourced Study of Subjective and Objective Picture Quality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.02919/) (2015)
- [No-Reference Image Quality Assessment via Transformers, Relative Ranking, and Self-Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.06858/) (2021)
- [The 2018 PIRM Challenge on Perceptual Image Super-resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.07517/) (2018)
- [HunyuanImage 3.0 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.23951/) (2025)
- [Learning a No-Reference Quality Metric for Single-Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.05890/) (2016)
- [AGIQA-3K: An Open Database for AI-Generated Image Quality Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.04717/) (2023)
- [ARNIQA: Learning Distortion Manifold for Image Quality Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.14918/) (2023)
- [VisualQuality-R1: Reasoning-Induced Image Quality Assessment via Reinforcement Learning to Rank](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.14460/) (2025)
- [Your Agent May Misevolve: Emergent Risks in Self-evolving LLM Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.26354/) (2025)
- [Pico-Banana-400K: A Large-Scale Dataset for Text-Guided Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.19808/) (2025)
- [Dynamic Prompt Optimizing for Text-to-Image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.04095/) (2024)
- [JarvisArt: Liberating Human Artistic Creativity via an Intelligent Photo Retouching Agent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.17612/) (2025)
- [4KAgent: Agentic Any Image to 4K Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.07105/) (2025)
- [Toward Generalized Image Quality Assessment: Relaxing the Perfect Reference Quality Assumption](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.11221/) (2025)
- [Quality-Aware Image-Text Alignment for Opinion-Unaware Image Quality Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.11176/) (2024)
- [SynthID-Image: Image watermarking at internet scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.09263/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Mi-Ripple: Restoring Images Degraded by Iterative AI Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.11317/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The multi-step, iterative image editing capabilities of multi-modal agentic systems have transformed digital content creation. Although latest image editing models faithfully follow instructions and generate high-quality images in single-turn edits, we identify a critical weakness in multi-turn editing, which is the iterative degradation of image quality. As images are repeatedly edited, minor artifacts accumulate, rapidly leading to a severe accumulation of visible noise and a failure to follow simple editing instructions. To systematically study these failures, we introduce Banana100, a comprehensive dataset of 28,000 degraded images generated through 100 iterative editing steps, including diverse textures and image content. Alarmingly, image quality evaluators fail to detect the degradation. Among 21 popular no-reference image quality assessment (NR-IQA) metrics, none of them consistently assign lower scores to heavily degraded images than to clean ones. The dual failures of generators and evaluators may threaten the stability of future model training and the safety of deployed agentic systems, if the low-quality synthetic data generated by multi-turn edits escape quality filters. We release the full code and data to facilitate the development of more robust models, helping to mitigate the fragility of multi-modal agentic systems.