New User - Cannot access any Gemini model via API (404 Not Found Error) in any region

Google Cloud Cloud Foundations & Onboarding
1

Hello,

I am a new user with a full, activated billing account, trying to use the Vertex AI API for the first time.

I am consistently receiving a “404 Publisher Model not found” error when trying to access ANY Gemini model (including gemini-1.0-pro-vision) from ANY region (including us-central1 and europe-west1).

However, I CAN get a response from Gemini in the Vertex AI Studio Chat interface. The problem only occurs when using the API (via a Python script in Google Colab).

Project ID: [PII Removed by Staff]

What I have already tried:

  • Created a brand new, clean project.
  • Linked the billing account.
  • Enabled the Vertex AI API.
  • Verified I am the “Owner” of the project.
  • Created a Service Account with the “Vertex AI User” role and used its JSON key for authentication.
  • Tried multiple model names (gemini-1.0-pro-vision, gemini-1.5-pro-001).
  • Tried multiple regions (us-central1, europe-west1).

The error is always the same “404 model not found”, which seems to indicate a project/account level restriction, not a code error.

Can a Google employee please look into my project ([PROJE_ID]) and see why I might be blocked from accessing the models via the API, even though the Studio Chat works?

This is very frustrating and is completely blocking my project. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

2

I had a similar issue - my project and and datasets were all in EU West 2 (London) I had to move everything onto Multi-region EU and it worked instantly. Seems the models just aren’t accessible from specific regions… at the moment anyway.