Capabilities

Last updated January 21, 2026

In addition to text generation, you can use AI Gateway to generate images, search the web, track requests with observability, monitor usage, and enforce data retention policies. These features work across providers through a unified API, so you don't need separate integrations for each provider.

What you can build

Visual content apps: Generate product images, marketing assets, or UI mockups with Image Generation
Research assistants: Give models access to current information with Web Search
Production dashboards: Monitor costs, latency, and usage across all your AI requests with Observability
Compliant applications: Meet data privacy requirements with Zero Data Retention
Usage tracking: Check credit balances and look up generation details with the Usage API

Capabilities overview

Capability	What it does	Key features
Image Generation	Create images from text prompts	Multi-provider support, edit existing images, multiple output formats
Web Search	Access real-time web information	Perplexity search for any model, native provider search tools
Observability	Monitor and debug AI requests	Request traces, token counts, latency metrics, spend tracking
Zero Data Retention	Ensure data privacy compliance	Default ZDR policy, per-request enforcement, provider agreements
Usage & Billing	Track credits and generations	Credit balance API, generation lookup, cost tracking

Image generation

Generate images using AI models through a single API. Requests route to the best available provider, with authentication and response formatting handled automatically.

import { gateway } from '@ai-sdk/gateway';
import { experimental_generateImage as generateImage } from 'ai';
 
const { image } = await generateImage({
  model: gateway.imageModel('openai/dall-e-3'),
  prompt: 'A serene mountain landscape at sunset',
});

Supported providers include OpenAI (DALL-E), Google (Imagen), and multimodal LLMs with image capabilities. See the Image Generation docs for implementation details.

Web search

Enable AI models to search the web during conversations. This capability helps answer about current events, recent developments, or any topic requiring up-to-date information.

Two approaches are supported:

Perplexity Search: Add web search to any model, regardless of provider
Native provider tools: Use search capabilities built into Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google models

Observability

AI Gateway automatically logs every request with metrics you can view in the Vercel dashboard:

Requests by model: See which models your application uses most
Time to first token (TTFT): Monitor response latency
Token counts: Track input and output token usage
Spend: View costs broken down by model and time period

Access these metrics from the Observability tab at both team and project levels.

Zero data retention

AI Gateway uses zero data retention by default—it permanently deletes your prompts and responses after requests complete. For applications with strict compliance requirements, you can also enforce ZDR at the provider level:

const result = await streamText({
  model: 'anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5',
  prompt: 'Analyze this sensitive data...',
  providerOptions: {
    gateway: { zeroDataRetention: true },
  },
});

When zeroDataRetention is enabled, requests only route to providers with verified ZDR agreements. See the ZDR documentation for the list of compliant providers.