simonw
12 hours ago
I posted this in the other Astra thread but it's just fallen off the homepage, so...
Pelicans from Astra, plus 5.6 Sol, Terra, Luna for comparison: https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2026/gpt-6-and-5.6-p...
I think this is a genuinely interesting comparison grid. Astra may be more expensive, but if you have a budget of 10 cents for a Pelican Astra low gives you something SO much better than the other models.
Astra uses less tokens overall too, for better results.
Astra transcript here: https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer?url=ht...
dector
6 hours ago
Btw, they had 3D pelican-on-the-bicycle easter egg in one of the promo videos: https://youtu.be/bOC3DisEOfg?t=117 so I'm pretty sure that they spent some small amount of resources to train the model to produce good svg version as well. :D
stymaar
an hour ago
When you see how good the output of the Luna model without reasoning is compared to SotA just a year and a half ago, it's pretty clear that it's been trained on explicitly.
maleldil
10 minutes ago
I don't see how this is proof, and not just that the model got the better. You're comparing models a year and a half apart; this is a lifetime in LLM development.
justinbaker84
35 minutes ago
Your comparison grid is one of the most useful comparison grids I have ever seen in terms of measuring AI.
It feels silly to say that about making a pelican image but it really shows the difference in output and cost in an easy to understand way.
scotty79
5 minutes ago
They really can't decide which way pelican's knees should bend, do they?
threatripper
7 hours ago
It seems to start understanding how bicycles work. Look at the front fork. There are reasons why it's shaped the way it is in real bicycles. If you do physical simulations in 3D with reinforcement learning you will start understanding that most of the arrangements that the other agents use just won't work.
epihelix
6 hours ago
Yes, the curve of the front fork on the max pelican was what I noticed also. It's impressive (if not an accident), and a remarkably accurate bike overall. The pelican just needs to raise their seat a little.
steve-atx-7600
9 hours ago
You would not expect the developers of the model to optimize for a well known benchmark?
simonw
7 hours ago
Here's 'Generate an SVG of a ring-tailed lemur riding an electric scooter' at reasoning level max: https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer?url=ht...
Quote from the thinking trace:
> I’m thinking about how a helmet would obscure lemur ears, but using an electric scooter helmet seems responsible.
It's pretty solid - face is a little wonky but excellent tail and scooter.
stymaar
25 minutes ago
What if you asked a front/rear/top-side view of the scene (pelican or lemur)?
wolttam
37 minutes ago
Quote from the thinking *summary*.
And it left out the helmet :(
pilaf
4 hours ago
Interesting how the background is almost identical to two of the Astra pelicans'.
benatkin
5 hours ago
Hmm, the face makes it not work as a one shot artifact.
CamperBob2
6 hours ago
If you want to see something brutal, ask for a zebra riding a scooter. I have yet to see any models do a credible job at that.
ulrikrasmussen
2 hours ago
I remember that early image models couldn't generate a cyclops no matter how you prompted it, it would at best put a third eye in the forehead.
y1n0
9 hours ago
I would expect it happens more organically where people’s discussion of the benchmark and posted results find their way into the training data, like anything else on the internet.
Kranar
9 hours ago
What is this supposed to mean exactly? Do you think there are developers at OpenAI or Anthropic whose job is to train these state of the art models to draw pelicans riding bicycles? Like how exactly do you expect them to be doing that anyways? Hiring graphic artists to create SVGs of bike riding pelicans and feeding thousands of them into the model's training set?
mudkipdev
8 hours ago
Generate two images, get a vision model to judge, then RL reward the better one. And yes, OpenAI employees on twitter bragged about the model's SVG capabilities. So there are clearly people working there who care about it.
awakeasleep
8 hours ago
You gotta look up how RLHF works before you ask a demanding question like this.
dgellow
3 hours ago
> Do you think there are developers at OpenAI or Anthropic whose job is to train these state of the art models to draw pelicans riding bicycles?
Yes
kibae
8 hours ago
There was a HN post that tested this hypothesis a few weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49010129
stymaar
14 minutes ago
I don't think it's a great rebuttal, quite the opposite actually: it's the same prompt with the most obvioy tweak you can imagine and the results are all the same. That definitely looks like it's been something the models have been trained on, and not some emergent capability (and if you take into account how nonthinking Luna compares to the SotA models from a year an half ago: https://simonwillison.net/tags/pelican-riding-a-bicycle/?pag... it becomes even more obvious)
mi_lk
8 hours ago
It stopped being a valuable benchmark proxy quite a few model versions ago. Simon knows it, so is everyone who’s serious about it
Treat it like a bit as is
benatkin
7 hours ago
It's actually not just valuable, but infinitely valuable. Because it's imaginary, there is no way to do it perfectly, and thus the possibilities are endless, and it tests out both the formulation and execution of ideas.
jsdalton
10 hours ago
Simon do you have a page somewhere that shows _all_ of the penguins created by various models across time?
You’ve been doing this public service for so long (well, for so long in “AI hype” years anyway) that it’d be fascinating to see the evolution of this artifact across time.
simonw
10 hours ago
For the moment the best place to see them all is to browse the tag on my blog - 140 posts now! https://simonwillison.net/tags/pelican-riding-a-bicycle/
I'm running out of excuses not to build a proper comparison site though. Maybe I'll have Astra do rhat.
bahmboo
7 hours ago
Would be great to spend some money (other people's money) on paying some illustrators and artists to do the same for comparison. It could be straight images converted to SVG or direct vector graphics.
Gander5739
4 hours ago
Doesn't that somewhat miss the point? The models can't see and check their work, for instance.
bahmboo
3 hours ago
I'm not clear what you are saying. I am curious about what humans can do in the same context. It's becoming a standard I think for some tasks. E.g. how does a Gen AI stack up against a human in quality and "cost". Perhaps I'm missing what you are asking.
vb-8448
10 hours ago
I find curios that Astra's pelicans are basically the same (yellow sun top right corner, green bike, same bike shape, same legs style, very similar background) while in other there is more randomness.
thimabi
10 hours ago
This tracks with what OpenAI has been saying about Astra: that it tends to do things in a certain way and it’s up to you to prompt it to change its style.
pizza234
10 hours ago
Astra is the only model that correctly depicts occlusion of crank and leg, although interestingly, at max and medium levels (not in between).
vessenes
9 hours ago
Looked to me like it missed the chain though.
jeffybefffy519
4 hours ago
Shouldnt you give the AI a different task each time? otherwise the model companies just optimise for this benchmark because its in their best interest to...
petilon
9 hours ago
Astra pelican looks amazing: it looks like it was made by a professional artist. All the others look like they were made by kindergartners.
mkagenius
5 hours ago
Do you ever randomize on a particular model - like try and get 3 outputs and pick one at random?
Coz who knows if astra low will produce max like output if tried once more.
alastairr
5 hours ago
It's mildly interesting that the bikes always seem to be front wheel facing the right.
EugeneOZ
35 minutes ago
I love Astra pelicans! Awesome results!
BrokenCogs
11 hours ago
Interesting that all of the bikes are turquoise colored, except for the medium effort
andai
11 hours ago
Oh my goodness. I was not prepared for Luna on "none".
Reminded me of https://clocks.brianmoore.com/
Xunjin
11 hours ago
Do you have other ideas of "combinations" for this kind of benchmark?
I'm wondering if this is being trained on by the models today.
r_lee
10 hours ago
I have a feeling they've been doing that for a while now, even if unintentional, as it's such a well known benchmark
lspears
11 hours ago
Luna's price seems off
droidjj
10 hours ago
The price is probably coming from when Luna was first released. OpenAI slashed the price by 80% at the end of July.
simonw
10 hours ago
Yes! Good catch, thanks - I'll fix that.
simonw
9 hours ago
I had the prices wrong on Sol and Terra as well - they've all had price drops:
https://openai.com/index/advancing-the-price-performance-fro...
Sol discount is until November 21, 2026 according to https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/changelog
Luna — costs in cents
+--------+--------+---------+
| Effort | Before | After |
+--------+--------+---------+
| max | 7.83 | 1.57 |
| xhigh | 4.24 | 0.85 |
| high | 2.46 | 0.49 |
| medium | 1.26 | 0.25 |
| low | 0.76 | 0.15 |
| none | 0.71 | 0.14 |
+--------+--------+---------+
Per million tokens:
Before: $1 input / $6 output
After: $0.20 input / $1.20 output
Sol — costs in cents
+--------+--------+---------+
| Effort | Before | After |
+--------+--------+---------+
| max | 48.55 | 32.37 |
| xhigh | 24.11 | 16.08 |
| high | 10.38 | 6.92 |
| medium | 10.55 | 7.03 |
| low | 8.33 | 5.55 |
| none | 5.90 | 3.93 |
+--------+--------+---------+
Per million tokens:
Before: $5 input / $30 output
After: $4 input / $20 output
Terra — costs in cents
+--------+--------+---------+
| Effort | Before | After |
+--------+--------+---------+
| max | 32.09 | 25.67 |
| xhigh | 14.67 | 11.74 |
| high | 3.74 | 2.99 |
| medium | 3.46 | 2.77 |
| low | 3.47 | 2.78 |
| none | 2.60 | 2.08 |
+--------+--------+---------+
Per million tokens:
Before: $2.50 input / $15 output
After: $2 input / $12 outputCamperBob2
6 hours ago
Crazy how much the Astra pelicans resemble GLM 5.3's (https://crimson-jeri-74.tiiny.site/), down to the color of the bike and the scarf.
The improved front fork design mentioned by Threatripper is about the only thing Astra is doing better, IMO.
bnorton
9 hours ago
You’re closer to this than I am but do you find it odd that helmets are almost never included? Biking is almost always accompanied by helmets
maxlapdev
9 hours ago
But pelicans are almost never accompanied by helmets, so it cancels out.
sumedh
9 hours ago
> Biking is almost always accompanied by helmets
Isnt Netherlands the leader in bike riders and they dont wear helmets.
neutronicus
9 hours ago
At least one reasoning trace I saw considered a helmet and discarded the idea because it was worried about obscuring some detail
kart23
9 hours ago
radial spokes on the back wheel is not a thing irl. i wonder if any model has gotten that right?
gpugreg
4 hours ago
I scrolled through https://simonwillison.net/tags/pelican-riding-a-bicycle/ but did not see any image where the spokes were correct. For a moment, I thought that the text-to-image model might have gotten it right, but on closer look, the spokes fork https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2026/why-are-you-lik... But I enjoyed the image anyway.
fHr
10 hours ago
Luna is my go to daily model it's great value
PacificSpecific
7 hours ago
Fallen off the homepage so what? I genuinely don't understand
yreg
5 hours ago
So he is posting it again because he believes it is crucial information for us.
Apparently the crowd agrees because they keep upvoting these.
dolebirchwood
5 hours ago
Gotta double-dip on those internet points.