Is Google Veo 3.1 Down?

OMNI 1.1 FLASH IN GOOGLE VIDS AT NO COST FOR ANY GOOGLE ACCOUNT, WITH 1080P, SCENE EXTENSION AND EXACT DURATIONS (2026-09-23, vendor-primary): 'We're bringing the magic of video creation to everyone by expanding access to Google Vids. Now anyone with a Google or Google Workspace account can generate high-quality videos at no cost using our latest Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash model and new creative controls.' Entry point: vids.new on desktop, then 'Create AI videos'. Controls: **extend scenes** with smooth transitions 'while keeping the visual context, lighting, characters' appearance, and the environment consistent'; **set super-specific durations** so a clip aligns with a voiceover; **generate in HD** -- 'brand-new AI video scenes in full 1080p HD, or upscale existing AI clips'; templates for product launches, promo videos from a few photos, landing-page and event-signage clips. Every generated clip includes an imperceptible SynthID watermark. What Google does not state: per-account generation limits for the free tier, whether the Omni output in Vids matches the Flow resolution ladder recorded on 8/27, or any change to Veo 3.1 Lite's role in Vids -- so the pricing rows below keep both models. Related the same day: Gemini 3.8 Flash-Lite TTS is rolling into Google Vids 'for everyone' for voiceover (see gemini.ts).

GOOGLE FLOW TOOLS -- BUILD A CUSTOM WORKFLOW BY DESCRIBING IT, AND SIX CREATOR-BUILT TOOLS TO START FROM (2026-09-23, vendor-primary): Google Labs confirmed the feature the 9/18 fashion-week story only hinted at: 'with Google Flow Tools, you can build custom workflows simply by describing what you need', and 'open Google Flow, describe the task, and build your own tool today'. Six tools built with industry creatives shipped: **Mondo Sonico** (custom background ambiance, foley and contextual sound effects synchronized across separate editable tracks with exportable stems -- Ricardo Villavicencio and Sebastian Carvallo), **CaptionCast** (single-pass multilingual caption transcription, styling and animation -- Jay Pirabakaran), **ThumbnailForge** (photorealistic social thumbnails from one image, headline and prompt), **Surface** (generated architectural textures mapped in real time onto 3D walls, ceilings and floors -- Vojtek Morsztyn), **CollageMotion Pro** (animated mixed-media collages from text -- Hashem Al-Ghaili) and **SwissFlow Studio** (scripts to Swiss-style motion graphics). Any tool can be tried, duplicated and remixed. Why it matters here: Flow is the Veo/Omni creative surface, and 'tools' turns it from a prompt box into a small app platform on top of the video and music models; the sound-design tool is the first Google-shipped audio-stems workflow we have seen on Flow. Pricing and plan gating for Flow Tools are not stated in the post.

GOOGLE FLOW GETS OMNI 1.1 CREATIVE CONTROLS -- AND NOTE THE RESOLUTION LADDER, IT IS THE PRICING STORY (2026-08-27, vendor-primary): Google rolled Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash into **Google Flow**, its filmmaking front-end, '**starting today**' (i.e. live, not staged). **What creators get:** (1) **start and end frame control**, to keep characters and narrative consistent across a transition; (2) **export in 1080p or 4K** for broadcast/social finishing; (3) a **360p draft tier at explicitly 'lower-credit' cost** to test concepts and compositions before committing to a full render, after which you download at 720p. **THE 360p DRAFT TIER IS THE MOST PRACTICALLY USEFUL PART AND IT IS A COST MECHANIC, NOT A QUALITY ONE** -- Google is telling you iteration was the thing burning credits, and it is now separable from final render. Google calls this out as especially useful in the **Flow mobile app**: draft on a phone, upscale the keepers. **Relationship to this page: Flow is the consumer/creator surface for the same Omni 1.1 Flash model that shipped to developers via the Gemini API the same day** -- one story, two doors.

NEW SIBLING MODEL (2026-06-30): Google shipped **Gemini Omni Flash** (`gemini-omni-flash-preview`), a natively multimodal video-generation + conversational-editing model, to the Gemini API / AI Studio at **$0.10 per second of video output** (10-second clips at launch, longer coming). It sits alongside Veo 3.1 rather than replacing it -- Omni Flash targets fast, natural-language, in-conversation video editing, while Veo remains the peak-quality 4K/60fps cinematic model. Worth knowing if you're choosing a Google video API by cost vs. fidelity.

API MODEL-ID SHUTDOWN NOW IN EFFECT (2026-06-30): the older Veo API model IDs announced 6/15 have retired on schedule -- **Veo 2.0 and Veo 3.0 (`veo-2.0-generate-001`, `veo-3.0-generate-001`, `veo-3.0-fast-generate-001`) shut down 2026-06-30**. Pinned calls to these legacy endpoints are now failing; migrate to `veo-3.1-generate-preview` / `veo-3.1-fast-generate-preview` or the 3.1 GA models. Only affects direct API callers on the legacy 2.0/3.0 endpoints; consumer Veo 3.1 in Gemini / Google Vids is unaffected. (Separately, Google's older Imagen 4.0 image models shut down 2026-08-17.)

Generated humans still occasionally exhibit uncanny-valley effects on micro-expressions, though 3.1 is noticeably better than 3.0 on eye contact and mouth shape