Perplexity Pro users report image generation blocked by “regional restrictions” across countries

Many Perplexity Pro subscribers have been running into a roadblock when trying to generate images on the platform. Users report seeing error messages about regional restrictions even when subscribed to the Pro plan.

The trouble began surfacing in early January, with users across Reddit reporting that a feature they could access just weeks ago in December suddenly stopped working. The error message says: “Image generation is currently unavailable in this region, so an actual image file cannot be produced”.

That vague explanation left many wondering what changed and why their subscription wasn’t exempting them from whatever restriction Perplexity put in place.

Reports flooded in from all corners of the globe. Users in Southeast Asia, Europe, India, Canada, Australia and even the United States found themselves locked out of the image generation feature. One Reddit user from Italy noted they could generate images normally one day, then hit the restriction wall the next. Another frustrated subscriber joked that “this region” must be referring to Earth, given how widespread the issue appeared to be.

The platform offers multiple image generation models like GPT Image 1, Nano Banana, Seedream 4.5, and FLUX.1, but none of them work when you’re blocked by the regional restriction error. Some users tried using VPNs to get around the limitation, with mixed results. A few reported success connecting through US servers, though this workaround didn’t solve the problem for everyone.

The good news is that Perplexity appears to be aware of the situation. The company’s Discord channel has an active thread about the issue where they’ve acknowledged the problem and confirmed that a fix is in the works.

It’s unclear how long it’ll take for the fix to arrive, but I suspect the functionality will be restored sooner rather than later.

As usual, we’ll keep an eye out for any further developments and will update the article accordingly.

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