Struggling to Access Gemini 2.0 – Stuck on 1.5 and Cannot Create API Key

Google AI Studio
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Hi everyone,

I’ve been trying to get Gemini 2.0 running but keep hitting walls. Here’s a summary of my attempts and frustrations:

  1. Google AI Studio → Get API Key Failure
  • Whenever I try to get an API key, it says “cannot create a new project.”
  • I had 7 projects, deleted 3, and now I’m at 4—but it still refuses to create a key.
  1. Generative Language API Only Shows 1.5
  • Even though I want Gemini 2.0, it defaults to Gemini 1.5 Pro whenever I make calls.
  • No matter how I specify the model (e.g., gemini-2.0-flash, gemini-2.0-flash-001, etc.), it doesn’t work.
  1. Vertex AI Setup & SDK Attempts
  • I installed the Google Cloud SDK, set up gcloud auth application-default login, verified my region is us-central1.
  • Despite all that, Vertex AI doesn’t recognize Gemini 2.0 at all—any call returns “Unknown model” or “404 Not Found.”
  • I’ve tried using the Vertex AI Python SDK (with ChatModel.from_pretrained) and direct REST calls with the chat endpoint—no luck.

My end goal is pretty simple: I want to summarize some PDFs with Gemini 2.0 in batch (instead of manually uploading them to the AI Studio interface). But every route I’ve tried either fails to generate a new API key or only uses the older Gemini 1.5 model. I’m stuck.

Has anyone faced similar issues or found a workaround? Do I need special access or a different setup for Gemini 2.0? I’d appreciate any pointers—this has been a real headache!

Thanks in advance!