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Google has been stomping around like Godzilla this week, and this is the first time I decided to link my card to their AI studio. I had seen people saying that

Google has been stomping around like Godzilla this week, and this is the first time I decided to link my card to their AI studio. I had seen people saying that they gave up and went to another platform because it was "impossible to pay". I thought this was strange, but after trying to get a working API key for the past half hour, I see what they mean. Everything is set up, I see a message that says "You're using Paid API key [NanoBanano] as part of [NanoBanano]. All requests sent in this session will be charged." Go to prompt, and I get a "permission denied" error. There is no point in having impressive models if you make it a chore for me to -give you my money-

wheelerwj 11mo ago
100% this. I am using the pro/max plans on both claude and openai. Would love to experiment with gemini but paying is next to impossible. Why do i need the risk of a full blown gcp project just to test gemini. No thx.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- logankilpatrick 11mo ago
  You can test gemini in 3 clicks at https://ai.studio https://ai.studio
vunderba 11mo ago
If it's just the API you're interested in, Fal.ai has put Nano-Banana-Pro up for both generative and editing. A great deal less annoying to sign up for them since they're a pretty generalized provider of lots of AI related models. https://fal.ai/models/fal-ai/nano-banana-pro https://fal.ai/models/fal-ai/nano-banana-pro
- LaurensBER 11mo ago
  In general a better option, in the early days of AI video I tried to generate a video of a golden retriever using Google's AI Studio. It generated 4 in the highest quality and charged me 36 bucks. Not a crazy amount but definitely an unwelcome suprise. Fal.ai is pay as you go and has the cost right upfront.
  - vunderba 11mo ago
    100% agreed. Same reason that I use the OpenRouter API for most LLM usage.
  - minimaxir 11mo ago
    Vertex AI Studio setting a default of 4 videos where each video is several dollars to generate is a very funny footgun.
- echelon 11mo ago
  There's the solution right there. Google is still growing its AI "sea legs". They've turned the ship around on a dime and things are still a little janky. Truly a "startup mode" pivot. While we're on this subject of "Google has been stomping around like Godzilla", this is a nice place to state that I think the tide of AI is turning and the new battle lines are starting to appear. Google looks like it's going to lay waste to OpenAI and Anthropic and claim most of the market for itself. These companies do not have the cash flow and will have to train and build their asses off to keep up with where Google already is. gpt-image-1 is 1/1000th of Nano Banana Pro and takes 80 seconds to generate outputs. Two years ago Google looked weak. Now I really want to move a lot of my investments over to Google stock. How are we feeling about Google putting everyone out of work and owning the future? It's starting to feel that way to me. (FWIW, I really don't like how much power this one company has and how much of a monopoly it already was and is becoming.)
  - remich 11mo ago
    Valid questions, but I'd say that it's hard to know what the future holds when we get models that push the state of the art every few months. Claude sonnet 3.7 was released in February of this year. At the rate of change we're going, I wouldn't be surprised if we end up with Sonnet 5 by March 2026. As others have noted, Google's got a ways to go in making it easier to actually use their models, and though their recent releases have been impressive, it's not clear to me that the AI product category will remain free from the bad, old fiefdom culture that has doomed so many of their products over the last decade.
bonoboTP 11mo ago
You can use it also in Gemini.
- ceroxylon 11mo ago
  It wasn't there when I first went to Gemini after the announcement, but upon revisiting it gave me the prompt to try Nano Banana Pro. It failed at my niche (rare palm trees). Incredible technology, don't get me wrong, but still shocked at the cumbersome payment interface and annoyed that enabling Drive is the only way to save.
  - bonoboTP 11mo ago
    > at the cumbersome payment interface and annoyed that enabling Drive is the only way to save. For the general audience, Gemini is the intended product, API and AI studio is for advanced users. Gemini is very easy to pay for. In Gemini, you can save all images as a regular browser download by clicking the top right of the image where it says "Download full size".
- kashnote 11mo ago
  I hate that they kinda try to hide the model version. Like if you click the dropdown in the chat box, you can see that "Thinking" means 3 Pro. When you select the "Create images" tool, it doesn't tell you it's using Nano Banana Pro until it actually starts generating the image. Tell me the model it's using. It's as if Google is trying to unburden me with the knowledge of what model does what but it's just making things more confusing. Oh, and setting up AI Studio is a mess. First I have to create a project. Then an API key. Then I have to link the API key to the project. Then I have to link the project to the chat session... Come on, Google.
TacticalCoder 11mo ago
[dead]
eboynyc32 11mo ago
Yeah I was confused. I guess I’ll stick with nano plum for now.
kavenkanum 11mo ago
Oh my, you should have tried to integrate with Google Prism. That was a madness! Nano Banana was just a little tricky to set up in comparison!
andybak 11mo ago
It's amazing that the "hard problems" are turning out to be "not creating a completely broken user experience". Is that going to need AGI? Or maybe it will always be out of reach of our silicon overlords and require human input.
ProfessorZoom 11mo ago
I had to write a post request to try it when it launched
logankilpatrick 11mo ago
First off, apologies for the bad first impression, the team is pushing super hard to make sure it is easy to access these models. - On permission issue, not sure I follow the flow that got you there, pls email me more details if you are able too and happy to debug: Lkilpatrick@google.com - On overall friction for billing: we are working on a new billing experience built right into AI Studio that will make it super easy to add a CC and go build. This will also come along with things like hard billing caps and such. The expected ETA for global rollout is January!
- xmprt 11mo ago
  Please make sure that the new billing experience has support for billing limits and prepaid balance (to avoid unexpected charges)!
  - sandworm101 11mo ago
    Lol. Since the GirlsGoneWild people pioneered the concept of automatically-recurring subscriptions, unexpected charges and difficult-to-cancel billing is the game. The best customer is always the one that pays but never uses the service ... and ideally has forgotten or lost access to the email address they used when signing up.
    - mrandish 11mo ago
      > or lost access to the email address they used when signing up. Since Gmail controls access to tens of millions of people's email, I'm seeing potential for some cross-team synergy here!
      - _zoltan_ 11mo ago
        tens of millions? I think you're severely underestimating it.
  - logankilpatrick 11mo ago
    We are working on hard billing limits! Should land in late Dec or early Jan!
abbycurtis33 11mo ago
Same, I couldn't give them my money.
kennethologist 11mo ago
Easiest way is to go https://aistudio.google.com/api-keys https://aistudio.google.com/api-keys set up an api key and add your billing to it.
- lostmsu 11mo ago
  Does this work on non-personal Google accounts?
  - logankilpatrick 11mo ago
    yes
re5i5tor 11mo ago
Ha, I have been steeling myself for a long chat with Claude about “how the F to get AI Studio up and working.” With paying being one of the hardest parts. Without a doubt one essential ingredient will be, “you need a Google Project to do that.” Oh, and it will also definitely require me to Manage My Google Account.
- logankilpatrick 11mo ago
  For new users in AI Studio, we make a cloud project and key for you automatically. Hear you on the billing setup, we are working on it, landing in January!
herval 11mo ago
Google APIs in general are hilariously hard to adopt. With any other service on the planet, you go to a platform page, grab an api key and you’re good to go. Want to use Google’s gmail, maps, calendar or gemini api? Create a cloud account, create an app, enable the gmail service, create an oauth app, download a json file. Cmon now…
- fx1994 11mo ago
  Yeah, I'm not a dev and not using AI at all but had a need to create oauth keys and some APIs for some project... sometimes it works sometimes it doesnt and it's so complicated...but got it working in the end, thos it stops working after some time, it was like, Google, really?
- creesch 11mo ago
  Don't forget the tradition of having to migrate to a new API after a while because this one gets deprecated for "reasons". Not just a newer version, but a complete non backwards compatible new API that also requires its own setup. To be fair, that might have changed in recent years. But after having to deal with that a few times for a few hobby projects I simply stopped trying. Can't imagine how it is for companies making use of these APIs. I guess it provides work for teams on otherwise stable applications...
- archon810 11mo ago
  When I wake up in cold sweat in the middle of the night, it's because I interacted with yhr Google cloud management UI before I went to sleep.
- logankilpatrick 11mo ago
  I know not accessible across all API's, but the point of AI Studio is you can sign up and we just make an API key for you automagically, no extra button clicks or the like.
nikcub 11mo ago
There is an entire business opportunity in just building better user and developer frontends to Google's AI products. It's so incredibly frustrating.
- shooker435 11mo ago
  lol that’s our whole company, Nimstrata
rustystump 11mo ago
How long till ai studio is in the graveyard i wonder? For real google has some of the most amazing tech but jfc do they suck at making a product. The only way i use google is via an api key which billing for is arcane to be charitable. How can billions not crack the problem of quickly accepting cash from customers? Surely their ads platform does this?
tianshuo 11mo ago
Try fal.ai instead, it has all image models.
mindcrime 11mo ago
So much this. The entire experience around using Google's AI API's is a complete shit-show. I was (stubborn|obstinate|stupid|whatever) enough to keep dicking around until I actually got some stuff working (a few weeks ago) but I still feel dirty from the whole process. And I still don't know what I'm using (Gemini? AI Studio? Vertex? GCP? Other??) or how all of this crap relates. And FSM forbid I have another time when my debit card number gets compromised and I have to try changing it with Google. That was even MORE painful than just trying to get things working in the first place. WTF am I editing, my GCP account or my Google account? Are those two different things? Yes? No? Sort of? But they're connected, somehow... right? I mean, I disable my card in one place, but find that billing is still trying to go to it anyway. And then I find another place on another Google page that mentions that card, but when I try to disable it I get some opaque error about "can't disable card because card is already in use. Disable card first" or whatever. I can't even... I mean, shit. It's hard to imagine creating an experience that is that bad even if you were trying to do so. Let me just say, I won't be recommending Google's AI API's, or GCP, or Vertex, or any of this stuff to anybody, anytime soon. I don't care how good their models are. At least chatting with Gemini at gemini.google.com works. So far that's about the only thing AI related from Google I've seen that doesn't seem like a complete cluster-f%@k.
windex 11mo ago
>I decided to link my card to their AI studio. A lot of us did this in the last 2 days. Gemini3 first and now this.
nick49488171 11mo ago
As a small advertiser, it can be surprisingly hard to give them money sometimes. (Trying to advertise an Airbnb.)
ph4rsikal 11mo ago
You should try contacting customer service.
stared 11mo ago
I ended up using OpenRouter (which I use anyway).
0pteron 11mo ago
I get this all the time on LibreWolf use Edge/Chrome and make sure not to have any privacy blocking addons.
pkphilip 11mo ago
Overall, the experience of setting up commercial solutions of any product on Google is needlessly complicated. This cuts across product lines.

wheelerwj 11mo ago

100% this. I am using the pro/max plans on both claude and openai. Would love to experiment with gemini but paying is next to impossible. Why do i need the risk of a full blown gcp project just to test gemini. No thx.

deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
logankilpatrick 11mo ago
You can test gemini in 3 clicks at https://ai.studio https://ai.studio

vunderba 11mo ago

If it's just the API you're interested in, Fal.ai has put Nano-Banana-Pro up for both generative and editing. A great deal less annoying to sign up for them since they're a pretty generalized provider of lots of AI related models. https://fal.ai/models/fal-ai/nano-banana-pro https://fal.ai/models/fal-ai/nano-banana-pro

LaurensBER 11mo ago
In general a better option, in the early days of AI video I tried to generate a video of a golden retriever using Google's AI Studio. It generated 4 in the highest quality and charged me 36 bucks. Not a crazy amount but definitely an unwelcome suprise. Fal.ai is pay as you go and has the cost right upfront.
- vunderba 11mo ago
  100% agreed. Same reason that I use the OpenRouter API for most LLM usage.
- minimaxir 11mo ago
  Vertex AI Studio setting a default of 4 videos where each video is several dollars to generate is a very funny footgun.
echelon 11mo ago
There's the solution right there. Google is still growing its AI "sea legs". They've turned the ship around on a dime and things are still a little janky. Truly a "startup mode" pivot. While we're on this subject of "Google has been stomping around like Godzilla", this is a nice place to state that I think the tide of AI is turning and the new battle lines are starting to appear. Google looks like it's going to lay waste to OpenAI and Anthropic and claim most of the market for itself. These companies do not have the cash flow and will have to train and build their asses off to keep up with where Google already is. gpt-image-1 is 1/1000th of Nano Banana Pro and takes 80 seconds to generate outputs. Two years ago Google looked weak. Now I really want to move a lot of my investments over to Google stock. How are we feeling about Google putting everyone out of work and owning the future? It's starting to feel that way to me. (FWIW, I really don't like how much power this one company has and how much of a monopoly it already was and is becoming.)
- remich 11mo ago
  Valid questions, but I'd say that it's hard to know what the future holds when we get models that push the state of the art every few months. Claude sonnet 3.7 was released in February of this year. At the rate of change we're going, I wouldn't be surprised if we end up with Sonnet 5 by March 2026. As others have noted, Google's got a ways to go in making it easier to actually use their models, and though their recent releases have been impressive, it's not clear to me that the AI product category will remain free from the bad, old fiefdom culture that has doomed so many of their products over the last decade.

bonoboTP 11mo ago

You can use it also in Gemini.

ceroxylon 11mo ago
It wasn't there when I first went to Gemini after the announcement, but upon revisiting it gave me the prompt to try Nano Banana Pro. It failed at my niche (rare palm trees). Incredible technology, don't get me wrong, but still shocked at the cumbersome payment interface and annoyed that enabling Drive is the only way to save.
- bonoboTP 11mo ago
  > at the cumbersome payment interface and annoyed that enabling Drive is the only way to save. For the general audience, Gemini is the intended product, API and AI studio is for advanced users. Gemini is very easy to pay for. In Gemini, you can save all images as a regular browser download by clicking the top right of the image where it says "Download full size".
kashnote 11mo ago
I hate that they kinda try to hide the model version. Like if you click the dropdown in the chat box, you can see that "Thinking" means 3 Pro. When you select the "Create images" tool, it doesn't tell you it's using Nano Banana Pro until it actually starts generating the image. Tell me the model it's using. It's as if Google is trying to unburden me with the knowledge of what model does what but it's just making things more confusing. Oh, and setting up AI Studio is a mess. First I have to create a project. Then an API key. Then I have to link the API key to the project. Then I have to link the project to the chat session... Come on, Google.

TacticalCoder 11mo ago

[dead]

eboynyc32 11mo ago

Yeah I was confused. I guess I’ll stick with nano plum for now.

kavenkanum 11mo ago

Oh my, you should have tried to integrate with Google Prism. That was a madness! Nano Banana was just a little tricky to set up in comparison!

andybak 11mo ago

It's amazing that the "hard problems" are turning out to be "not creating a completely broken user experience". Is that going to need AGI? Or maybe it will always be out of reach of our silicon overlords and require human input.

ProfessorZoom 11mo ago

I had to write a post request to try it when it launched

logankilpatrick 11mo ago

First off, apologies for the bad first impression, the team is pushing super hard to make sure it is easy to access these models. - On permission issue, not sure I follow the flow that got you there, pls email me more details if you are able too and happy to debug: Lkilpatrick@google.com - On overall friction for billing: we are working on a new billing experience built right into AI Studio that will make it super easy to add a CC and go build. This will also come along with things like hard billing caps and such. The expected ETA for global rollout is January!

xmprt 11mo ago
Please make sure that the new billing experience has support for billing limits and prepaid balance (to avoid unexpected charges)!
- sandworm101 11mo ago
  Lol. Since the GirlsGoneWild people pioneered the concept of automatically-recurring subscriptions, unexpected charges and difficult-to-cancel billing is the game. The best customer is always the one that pays but never uses the service ... and ideally has forgotten or lost access to the email address they used when signing up.
  - mrandish 11mo ago
    > or lost access to the email address they used when signing up. Since Gmail controls access to tens of millions of people's email, I'm seeing potential for some cross-team synergy here!
    - _zoltan_ 11mo ago
      tens of millions? I think you're severely underestimating it.
- logankilpatrick 11mo ago
  We are working on hard billing limits! Should land in late Dec or early Jan!

abbycurtis33 11mo ago

Same, I couldn't give them my money.

kennethologist 11mo ago

Easiest way is to go https://aistudio.google.com/api-keys https://aistudio.google.com/api-keys set up an api key and add your billing to it.

lostmsu 11mo ago
Does this work on non-personal Google accounts?
- logankilpatrick 11mo ago
  yes

re5i5tor 11mo ago

Ha, I have been steeling myself for a long chat with Claude about “how the F to get AI Studio up and working.” With paying being one of the hardest parts. Without a doubt one essential ingredient will be, “you need a Google Project to do that.” Oh, and it will also definitely require me to Manage My Google Account.

logankilpatrick 11mo ago
For new users in AI Studio, we make a cloud project and key for you automatically. Hear you on the billing setup, we are working on it, landing in January!

herval 11mo ago

Google APIs in general are hilariously hard to adopt. With any other service on the planet, you go to a platform page, grab an api key and you’re good to go. Want to use Google’s gmail, maps, calendar or gemini api? Create a cloud account, create an app, enable the gmail service, create an oauth app, download a json file. Cmon now…

fx1994 11mo ago
Yeah, I'm not a dev and not using AI at all but had a need to create oauth keys and some APIs for some project... sometimes it works sometimes it doesnt and it's so complicated...but got it working in the end, thos it stops working after some time, it was like, Google, really?
creesch 11mo ago
Don't forget the tradition of having to migrate to a new API after a while because this one gets deprecated for "reasons". Not just a newer version, but a complete non backwards compatible new API that also requires its own setup. To be fair, that might have changed in recent years. But after having to deal with that a few times for a few hobby projects I simply stopped trying. Can't imagine how it is for companies making use of these APIs. I guess it provides work for teams on otherwise stable applications...
archon810 11mo ago
When I wake up in cold sweat in the middle of the night, it's because I interacted with yhr Google cloud management UI before I went to sleep.
logankilpatrick 11mo ago
I know not accessible across all API's, but the point of AI Studio is you can sign up and we just make an API key for you automagically, no extra button clicks or the like.

nikcub 11mo ago

There is an entire business opportunity in just building better user and developer frontends to Google's AI products. It's so incredibly frustrating.

shooker435 11mo ago
lol that’s our whole company, Nimstrata

rustystump 11mo ago

How long till ai studio is in the graveyard i wonder? For real google has some of the most amazing tech but jfc do they suck at making a product. The only way i use google is via an api key which billing for is arcane to be charitable. How can billions not crack the problem of quickly accepting cash from customers? Surely their ads platform does this?

tianshuo 11mo ago

Try fal.ai instead, it has all image models.

mindcrime 11mo ago

So much this. The entire experience around using Google's AI API's is a complete shit-show. I was (stubborn|obstinate|stupid|whatever) enough to keep dicking around until I actually got some stuff working (a few weeks ago) but I still feel dirty from the whole process. And I still don't know what I'm using (Gemini? AI Studio? Vertex? GCP? Other??) or how all of this crap relates. And FSM forbid I have another time when my debit card number gets compromised and I have to try changing it with Google. That was even MORE painful than just trying to get things working in the first place. WTF am I editing, my GCP account or my Google account? Are those two different things? Yes? No? Sort of? But they're connected, somehow... right? I mean, I disable my card in one place, but find that billing is still trying to go to it anyway. And then I find another place on another Google page that mentions that card, but when I try to disable it I get some opaque error about "can't disable card because card is already in use. Disable card first" or whatever. I can't even... I mean, shit. It's hard to imagine creating an experience that is that bad even if you were trying to do so. Let me just say, I won't be recommending Google's AI API's, or GCP, or Vertex, or any of this stuff to anybody, anytime soon. I don't care how good their models are. At least chatting with Gemini at gemini.google.com works. So far that's about the only thing AI related from Google I've seen that doesn't seem like a complete cluster-f%@k.

windex 11mo ago

>I decided to link my card to their AI studio. A lot of us did this in the last 2 days. Gemini3 first and now this.

nick49488171 11mo ago

As a small advertiser, it can be surprisingly hard to give them money sometimes. (Trying to advertise an Airbnb.)

ph4rsikal 11mo ago

You should try contacting customer service.

stared 11mo ago

I ended up using OpenRouter (which I use anyway).

0pteron 11mo ago

I get this all the time on LibreWolf use Edge/Chrome and make sure not to have any privacy blocking addons.

pkphilip 11mo ago

Overall, the experience of setting up commercial solutions of any product on Google is needlessly complicated. This cuts across product lines.