vercel/ai · error · NoSuchModelError

imageModel

Error message

imageModel

What it means

The Anthropic provider's `imageModel` factory is a stub that throws NoSuchModelError with modelType 'imageModel' for any modelId. Anthropic does not expose an image-generation capability through this provider, so every call fails.

Source

Thrown at packages/anthropic/src/anthropic-provider.ts:199

      throw new Error(
        'The Anthropic model function cannot be called with the new keyword.',
      );
    }

    return createChatModel(modelId);
  };

  provider.specificationVersion = 'v4' as const;
  provider.languageModel = createChatModel;
  provider.chat = createChatModel;
  provider.messages = createChatModel;

  provider.embeddingModel = (modelId: string) => {
    throw new NoSuchModelError({ modelId, modelType: 'embeddingModel' });
  };
  provider.textEmbeddingModel = provider.embeddingModel;
  provider.imageModel = (modelId: string) => {
    throw new NoSuchModelError({ modelId, modelType: 'imageModel' });
  };

  provider.files = () =>
    new AnthropicFiles({
      provider: providerName,
      baseURL,
      headers: getHeaders,
      fetch: options.fetch,
    });

  provider.skills = createSkills;

  provider.tools = anthropicTools;

  return provider;
}

/**

View on GitHub (pinned to 69428b1f8b)

Solutions

1. Use an image-capable provider, e.g. `createOpenAI().image('dall-e-3')`, `@ai-sdk/google` (Imagen), or `@ai-sdk/amazon-bedrock`.
2. Keep Anthropic for text/chat and route image generation to a dedicated provider instance.

Example fix

// before
const model = anthropic.imageModel('claude-image');
// after
import { createOpenAI } from '@ai-sdk/openai';
const model = createOpenAI().image('dall-e-3');

if (providerId === 'anthropic') {
  throw new Error('Image generation requires an image-capable provider');
}
const imageModel = imageProviders[providerId].imageModel(modelId);

function supportsImages(p: any): boolean {
  try {
    p.imageModel('probe');
    return true;
  } catch (e) {
    return !(NoSuchModelError.isInstance(e) && e.modelType === 'imageModel');
  }
}

try {
  return await generateImage({ model: anthropic.imageModel(id), prompt });
} catch (error) {
  if (NoSuchModelError.isInstance(error) && error.modelType === 'imageModel') {
    return generateImage({ model: openai.image('dall-e-3'), prompt });
  }
  throw error;
}

When it happens

Trigger: Calling `anthropic.imageModel('some-id')` or passing it to `generateImage({ model: anthropic.imageModel(...) })`.

Common situations: Trying to generate images with Claude; generic image pipelines configured with the wrong provider; assuming multimodal input support implies image generation support.

Related errors

• imageModel
• AI_NoSuchModelError
• embeddingModel
• AssemblyAI does not provide language models
• embeddingModel

AI-assisted analysis of vercel/ai@69428b1f8b (2026-08-30). Data as JSON: /api/errors/41ed4d8dd033486d. Report an issue: GitHub.