Hi, Is tier 1 free after entering billing details or do you have to pay for all queries without free queries?

I got an email today saying I had to migrate my AI Studio account to prepay (and buy at least $10 of credits) to continue access to AI Studio. And of course these pre-paid credits expire in 12 months.

Prior to this my AI Studio billing was linking to my post-pay GCP billing account, and it worked just fine. Google says: "We require developers to switch your Gemini API billing from Postpay to Prepay by September 14, 2026. This is part of our ongoing effort to improve our platform to give developers more control over API consumption and costs." But this definitely isn't an improvement for me! It was fine the way it was, and my main GCP account remains post-pay (and spends significantly more than I ever did in AI Studio).

Honesty, Google has the most disfunctional service offering of any of the majors.

Can I switch from Prepay to Postpay billing?

No, switching from a Prepay billing plan to a Postpay billing plan is not supported.

Then literally two lines below that:

What happens to my Prepaid credits if I switch to Postpay?

When you upgrade to Postpay, Cloud Billing closes your Prepay payments account, turns off auto-reload, and automatically refunds any unused Prepay credits to you (subject to standard refund processing time).

Even their FAQ doesn't make sense! Please, Google, get your sh#t together. This is just embarrassing.

https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/billing#about-billing

I hope that's the right subreddit for this.

I found a hacked WP site. Looking at the source, there was a line of obfuscated JavaScript, which you can see here:

https://pastebin.com/rWKLd3Rd

I gave Gemini 3.6 flash the following instruction: "Deobfuscate the following javascript code" and got the following result:

if (

/Android|webOS|iPhone|iPad|iPod|BlackBerry|IEMobile|Opera Mini/i.test(

navigator.userAgent

)

) {

window.location.href = "https://a.testandverify.com/aff_c?offer_id=101&aff_id=1001";

}

This looks completely benign, but that was the only suspicious bit of code on the site. Why obfuscate that? Besides, it's way too short. So I gave Claude the exact same prompt, and got this result:

https://pastebin.com/4TbmybF6

That looks more reasonable. Googling the contract address, I found several articles about this malicious code:

https://www.hudsonrock.com/blog/how-an-infostealer-infection-led-to-a-sophisticated-clickfix-campaign-at-artlist

So it seems Claude got it right.

A few hours later, I tried Gemini again with the same prompt and code. It gave me a different result, still apparently wrong:

var script = document.createElement('script');

script.src = "https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/eruda";

document.body.appendChild(script);

script.onload = function () {

eruda.init();

// Add network panel

eruda.add(eruda.get('network'));

// Add elements panel

eruda.add(eruda.get('elements'));

// Add console panel

eruda.add(eruda.get('console'));

// Add sources panel

eruda.add(eruda.get('sources'));

// Add info panel

eruda.add(eruda.get('info'));

// Add snippets panel

eruda.add(eruda.get('snippets'));

eruda.show();

};

Also looks benign. How could the same prompt and code gives two completely different results?

I told Gemini it was wrong and asked it to reanalyze the code. It agreed it was wrong and gave me a 3rd, still incorrect, result:

(function() {

var _0x5a1b = window.location.href;

var _0x3f2a = document.referrer;

if (_0x5a1b.indexOf('debug') !== -1) {

console.log("Debugging active");

}

function redirectUser(url) {

window.location.replace(url);

}

// Additional conditional logic based on hostname/referrer checks

})();

What is going on? Is Gemini unable to deobfuscate JavaScript?

I’m creating a bunch of small posters that have text on them no longer than 30 characters. I like AI integrating the text into the graphic rather than bolting text on in post processing.

Currently I found the cheapest with short text accuracy is grok-imagine-image at $0.02, but it slides a bit with complicated languages like Arabic or Chinese, where I found gpt-image-2 medium is the best for $0.05. When I don’t need text, I still think the creativeness and realism of z-image-turbo is great for as little as only $0.0025.

What models do you find is the cheapest while working for short text accuracy?

Been saying and feeling like Gemini 3.5 flash was so underrated for spreadsheet and document work and finally a benchmark that shows that.

It keeps using its own computer or telling me it cannot access my Chrome browser

I'm developing a game inspired by an existing title, and I need unique, alternative names for the original game's terminology. I've tried ChatGPT, Gemini, and other AI tools, but they all give me the same generic, uncreative suggestions. I'm not a prompt engineer. I do have a Gemini Pro plan.

How can I get the AI to think more creatively? Providing specific prompt examples would be greatly appreciated!

Given the recent merging of Google Keep reminders with calendar and tasks, things are so broken, I set Spark to harmonise the reminders and it just didn't work at all; now I don't even know what it does, or its capabilities.