Three Google image models stop answering today
Google shuts down the Imagen 4 standard, ultra and fast endpoints today, 17th Aug’26. Google's own documentation points developers to Gemini 3.1 Flash Image instead, and it is not a like-for-like swap: the dedicated image-generation call is gone, so anything written against it has to be rewritten. It is not an isolated date either. OpenAI's own deprecations page shows the Assistants API removed on 26th Aug’26, with the Responses and Conversations APIs as the replacement. Now the Videos API and the Sora 2 models removed on 24th Sep’26 with no recommended replacement listed at all.
What it actually means
The lesson isn't "stop using hosted models", but it's that a model provider is a dependency with a lifecycle, and you should be treating it like one rather than like a feature you bought once. Three things we suggest doing this week: wrap every model call behind your own thin interface so a swap is one file rather than forty; put the provider deprecation pages on a calendar the way you'd watch a certificate expiry; and actually read the migration note before assuming it's a swap, because "recommended replacement" can quietly mean "rewrite the call".
A hosted model isn't a feature you bought. It's a dependency with an expiry date.
17 Augthe day three Imagen 4 endpoints stop answering
Source: Google AI for Developers · Monday, 17 August 2026