Hi,
Our Google Cloud project special-tf-prod (project number 405698311…, displayed as “iab-dev” in AI Studio) has been held at Tier 1 since an automated abuse containment in April 2026. We have completed every remediation step Google asked for, but there is no longer any working channel to request a review.
What happened
- Four support cases were auto-created on the project by “Google Counter Abuse Technology”: #70464682 (2026-04-30), #72606759 (2026-07-04), #73665357 (2026-08-04), #74401802 (2026-08-25). All are now Closed.
- Stated reason: possible violation of Google Cloud ToS section 3.3C and the Gemini API ToS, “such as unauthorized reselling or model distillation on AI Studio (Gemini API)”. Usage limits were lowered as containment.
- The notification emails were delivered only to five project owners who are not the people operating the project, so nobody on our team saw them for four months.
What the project actually does
It runs an internal LLM gateway (LiteLLM) used only by our own employees and internal services: text translation, accommodation search queries, review summarization. A single AI Studio key fronts requests from several internal teams, which we believe is what the classifier read as reselling. There is no external resale of the API and no model distillation.
What we have already done
- 2026-09-03: replied to cloudsupport@google.com on the case #74401802 thread, citing all four case numbers, with a full explanation of the usage pattern.
- 2026-09-04: deleted 9 API keys that had zero calls in 90 days, removed the generativelanguage restriction from an unused iOS key, and corrected Essential Contacts so future notifications reach the operating team.
- We are shifting this workload to Vertex AI, which is the appropriate surface for a gateway pattern like ours.
Why we believe the project-level flag is still active
On the same project, Vertex AI calls to gemini-2.5-flash-lite are currently rejected with 403 “terms of use violation” at a 33-58% rate across all 14 regions we call, roughly 20,000 rejections per day. We received no separate notification about this. A support case opened through our reseller has been pending with the product team since 2026-09-08.
Where we are stuck
- The four cases are Closed and read-only. There is no comment box and no Reopen button.
- Our organization has no paid support plan, so we cannot open a new technical case directly.
- Google Support told us through our reseller that the original automated email cannot be re-sent, and that the original thread is closed, so replying is no longer possible.
- Another project of ours on the same billing account is at Tier 3, while special-tf-prod remains at Tier 1 despite being far past the $1,000 spend and 30-day tenure thresholds.
What we are asking
Could someone from the Gemini API team trigger a manual review of the containment on project special-tf-prod (405698311…) so the tier limits can be restored? We are happy to provide anything that helps: per-credential usage breakdown, the fixed system prompts we send, or the full API key inventory.
Thank you.