← News & Changelog

4 entries on this day.

  1. Platform

    Gemini API billing is moving to prepaid for accounts Google has notified — Gemini and Nano Banana keep working through api.aicu.ai

    Google AI Studio is moving Gemini API billing from postpaid to prepaid. For the accounts that received Google's notice, the deadline is October 12, 2026: once the prepaid balance is zero, paid Gemini API calls stop, even with a correct key. (If you only use the free tier, Google says there is nothing to do.) If you call the Gemini API with your own key, check the billing page in Google AI Studio. The same models are also on api.aicu.ai, behind one key: gemini-flash and gemini-3.6-flash on POST /v1/chat/completions (OpenAI-compatible — set the base URL and the model name), and nano-banana and nano-banana-2.1 on POST /v1/images/generations. You pay in AP from one balance that covers every model, and the amount charged comes back with each response. We switched our own Google billing to prepay on October 11 and confirmed image generation afterwards; code that calls api.aicu.ai did not change. The blog post walks through both routes, with samples in Python and curl.

    Read the post ↗
  2. Platform

    The API lineup today: 34 models behind one key, and a round of fixes that make calls say what they do

    GET /v1/models now lists 34 models: 21 for chat, 6 for images, 4 for speech, 2 for transcription and 1 for video — all behind one key, all billed in AP, each with its price in the same response. The newest is Nano Banana 2.1 for images, added today. What changed around them this month: Transcription is billed by the length the model measured. We used to estimate the length from the text and the file size, which overcharged ordinary speech and undercharged audio with long silences. The price per 10 seconds has not changed. Speech: parameters that would be ignored are now rejected. Sending voice to /v1/tts/generate (which takes slug) used to produce the default voice and a 200; it now returns 400 with the name of the parameter and where to send it instead. The Japanese reading dictionary is public. GET /v1/tts/yomi returns the replacements the server applies before synthesis, so you can check how a name will be read before you generate. The API reference is in English. Every public operation in openapi.json has an English description. The keys page has samples that run. Speech, text and image, in curl and Python, each verified against production. Images: the file URL needs your key. The response also carries the image inline; the docs now show how to display it in a browser without shipping a key. Prices are in GET /v1/models and are reviewed every Wednesday — read them from there rather than keeping a copy.

    Models and prices ↗
  3. Platform

    Terms of Service and Privacy Policy updated (version 2026-10) — please confirm in your dashboard

    The Terms of Service and the Privacy Policy are no longer drafts. What changed in the Terms: one account per person or organization, and automated systems act under the person or organization that holds the account (3.1, 3.3); business use belongs on a business account — write to api@aicu.ai (3.4); free credits are for personal evaluation (5.3); no resale of the Service without a reseller agreement (4.5); voices need the consent of the speaker (4.6); speech features follow the ElevenLabs terms and prohibited use policy, and we may audit usage for compliance (2.1); what we record, what we store, and when we may look at content (7.1); and a limit of liability (9). The Privacy Policy now describes what the platform does today: the text you send for speech is not kept in usage records, generated output is cached but not archived, and your content is not used to train models. Requests about your data go to api@aicu.ai; abuse reports to api+abuse@aicu.ai. Please confirm: the next time you open the dashboard it asks you to accept version 2026-10 — one click. Your API keys keep working in the meantime. The updated Terms apply from October 11, 2026. Continuing to use the Service after that date means you accept them.

    Terms of Service ↗
  4. Model

    Nano Banana 2.1 is live as `nano-banana-2.1` (14 reference images, 1K/2K/4K, panoramas). `nano-banana` switches to it on 2026-10-21

    Google released Nano Banana 2.1 (gemini-nano-banana-2.1, built on Gemini 3.6 Flash) on 2026-10-06. It is on the gateway as `nano-banana-2.1`: up to 14 reference images (4 characters + 10 objects), size of 1K / 2K / 4K, aspect_ratio including the new panoramas 4:1 / 1:4 / 8:1 / 1:8, and better Japanese text rendering. quality picks the thinking level (low = minimal, medium, high). Prices measured upstream on 2026-10-07: 1K 1,200 AP (low) / 1,500 AP (medium, high), 2K 1,750 / 1,950, 4K 3,600 / 3,800, plus 60 AP per reference image. Google deprecated Gemini 3.1 Flash Image (the model behind nano-banana) the same day. On 2026-10-21 05:00 UTC the alias `nano-banana` (and `gemini-3.1-flash-image-preview`) will resolve to 2.1; at the default settings that is 1,170 → 1,500 AP per image, hence this advance notice. Pin nano-banana-2.1 now, or keep calling nano-banana and get the new model on that date.

    Image API docs ↗