So, you've said multiple times in the past that you're not concerned about AI labs training for this specific test because if they did, it would be so obviously incongruous that you'd easily spot the manipulation and call them out.
Which tbh has never really sat right with me, seemingly placing way too much confidence in your ability to differentiate organic vs. manipulated output in a way I don't think any human could be expected to.
To me, this example is an extremely neat and professional SVG and so far ahead it almost seems too good to be true. But like with every previous model, you don't seem to have the slightest amount of skepticism in your review. I don't think I truly believe Google cheated here, but it's so good it does therefore make me question whether there could ever be an example of a pelican SVG in the future that actually could trigger your BS detector?
I know you say it's just a fun/dumb benchmark that's not super important, but you're easily in the top 3 most well known AI "influencers" whose opinion/reviews about model releases carry a lot of weight, providing a lot of incentive with trillions of dollars flying around. Are you still not at all concerned by the amount of attention this benchmark receives now/your risk of unwittingly being manipulated?
This benchmark outcome is actually really impressive given the difficulty of this task. It shows that this particular model manages to "think" coherently and maintain useful information in its context for what has to be an insane overall amount of tokens, likely across parallel "thinking" chains. Likely also has access to SVG-rendering tools and can "see" and iterate on the result via multimodal input.
I routinely check out the pelicans you post and I do agree, this is the best yet. It seemed to me that the wings/arms were such a big hangup for these generators.
For every combination of animal and vehicle? Very unlikely.
The beauty of this benchmark is that it takes all of two seconds to come up with your own unique one. A seahorse on a unicycle. A platypus flying a glider. A man’o’war piloting a Portuguese man of war. Whatever you want.
No, not every combination. The question is about the specific combination of a pelican on a bicycle. It might be easy to come up with another test, but we're looking at the results from a particular one here.
I was expecting something more realistic... the true test of what you are doing is how representative is the thing in relation to the real world. E.g. does the pelican look like a pelican as it exists in reality? This cartoon stuff is cute but doesnt pass muster in my view.
If it doesn't relate to the real world, then it most likely will have no real effect on the real economy. Pure and simple.
I disagree. The task asks for an SVG; which is a vector format associated with line drawings, clipart and cartoons. I think it's good that models are picking up on that context.
In contrast, the only "realistic" SVGs I've seen are created using tools like potrace, and look terrible.
I also think the prompt itself, of a pelican on bicycle, is unrealistic and cartoonish; so making a cartoon is a good way to solve the task.
The request is for an SVG, generally _not_ the format for photorealistic images. If you want to start your own benchmark, feel free to ask for a photorealistic JPEG or PNG of a pelican riding a bicycle. Could be interesting to compare and contrast, honestly.
I'll agree to disagree. In any thread about a new model, I personally expect the pelican comment to be out there. It's informative, ritualistic and frankly fun. Your comment however, is a little harsh. Why mad?
It's worth noting that you mean excellent in terms of prior AI output. I'm pretty sure this wouldn't be considered excellent from a "human made art" perspective. In other words, it's still got a ways to go!
Edit: someone needs to explain why this comment is getting downvoted, because I don't understand. Did someone's ego get hurt, or what?
It depends, if you meant from a human coding an SVG "manually" the same way, I'd still say this is excellent (minus the reflection issue). If you meant a human using a proper vector editor, then yeah.
Indeed. And when you factor in the amount invested... yeah it looks less impressive. The question is how much more money needs to be invested to get this thing closer to reality? And not just in this instance. But for any instance e.g. a seahorse on a bike.
So, you've said multiple times in the past that you're not concerned about AI labs training for this specific test because if they did, it would be so obviously incongruous that you'd easily spot the manipulation and call them out.
Which tbh has never really sat right with me, seemingly placing way too much confidence in your ability to differentiate organic vs. manipulated output in a way I don't think any human could be expected to.
To me, this example is an extremely neat and professional SVG and so far ahead it almost seems too good to be true. But like with every previous model, you don't seem to have the slightest amount of skepticism in your review. I don't think I truly believe Google cheated here, but it's so good it does therefore make me question whether there could ever be an example of a pelican SVG in the future that actually could trigger your BS detector?
I know you say it's just a fun/dumb benchmark that's not super important, but you're easily in the top 3 most well known AI "influencers" whose opinion/reviews about model releases carry a lot of weight, providing a lot of incentive with trillions of dollars flying around. Are you still not at all concerned by the amount of attention this benchmark receives now/your risk of unwittingly being manipulated?
The other SVGs I tried from my private collection of prompts were all similarly impressive.
Is there a way you can showcase a few of these?
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Tbh they'd have to be absolutely useless at benchmarkmaxxing if they didn't include your pelican riding a bicycle...
We've reached PGI
This benchmark outcome is actually really impressive given the difficulty of this task. It shows that this particular model manages to "think" coherently and maintain useful information in its context for what has to be an insane overall amount of tokens, likely across parallel "thinking" chains. Likely also has access to SVG-rendering tools and can "see" and iterate on the result via multimodal input.
Wow. I wonder how it would do with pure CSS a la https://diana-adrianne.com/
>"The pelican riding a bicycle is excellent. I think it's the best I've seen. https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/12/gemini-3-deep-think/"
Yeah this is nuts. First real step-change we've seen since Claude 3.5 in '24.
I routinely check out the pelicans you post and I do agree, this is the best yet. It seemed to me that the wings/arms were such a big hangup for these generators.
Is there a list of these for each model, that you've catalogued somewhere?
At the moment that's mostly my tag page here but I really need to formalize it: https://simonwillison.net/tags/pelican-riding-a-bicycle/
How likely this problem is already on the training set by now?
If anyone trains a model on https://simonwillison.net/tags/pelican-riding-a-bicycle/ they're going to get some VERY weird looking pelicans.
Why would they train on that? Why not just hire someone to make a few examples.
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For every combination of animal and vehicle? Very unlikely.
The beauty of this benchmark is that it takes all of two seconds to come up with your own unique one. A seahorse on a unicycle. A platypus flying a glider. A man’o’war piloting a Portuguese man of war. Whatever you want.
No, not every combination. The question is about the specific combination of a pelican on a bicycle. It might be easy to come up with another test, but we're looking at the results from a particular one here.
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I've heard it posited that the reason the frontier companies are frontier is because they have custom data and evals. This is what I would do too
You can always ask for a tyrannosaurus driving a tank.
The reflection of the sun in the water is completely wrong. LLMs are still useless. (/s)
It's not actually, look up some photos of the sun setting over the ocean. Here's an example:
https://stockcake.com/i/sunset-over-ocean_1317824_81961
That’s only if the sun is above the horizon entirely.
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Highly disagree.
I was expecting something more realistic... the true test of what you are doing is how representative is the thing in relation to the real world. E.g. does the pelican look like a pelican as it exists in reality? This cartoon stuff is cute but doesnt pass muster in my view.
If it doesn't relate to the real world, then it most likely will have no real effect on the real economy. Pure and simple.
I disagree. The task asks for an SVG; which is a vector format associated with line drawings, clipart and cartoons. I think it's good that models are picking up on that context.
In contrast, the only "realistic" SVGs I've seen are created using tools like potrace, and look terrible.
I also think the prompt itself, of a pelican on bicycle, is unrealistic and cartoonish; so making a cartoon is a good way to solve the task.
The request is for an SVG, generally _not_ the format for photorealistic images. If you want to start your own benchmark, feel free to ask for a photorealistic JPEG or PNG of a pelican riding a bicycle. Could be interesting to compare and contrast, honestly.
Do you have to still keep trying to bang on about this relentlessly?
It was sort of humorous for the maybe first 2 iterations, now it's tacky, cheesy, and just relentless self-promotion.
Again, like I said before, it's also a terrible benchmark.
I'll agree to disagree. In any thread about a new model, I personally expect the pelican comment to be out there. It's informative, ritualistic and frankly fun. Your comment however, is a little harsh. Why mad?
It's HN's Carthago delenda est moment.
It being a terrible benchmark is the bit.
Eh, i find it more of a not very informative but lighthearted commentary
It's worth noting that you mean excellent in terms of prior AI output. I'm pretty sure this wouldn't be considered excellent from a "human made art" perspective. In other words, it's still got a ways to go!
Edit: someone needs to explain why this comment is getting downvoted, because I don't understand. Did someone's ego get hurt, or what?
It depends, if you meant from a human coding an SVG "manually" the same way, I'd still say this is excellent (minus the reflection issue). If you meant a human using a proper vector editor, then yeah.
maybe you're a pro vector artist but I couldn't create such a cool one myself in illustrator tbh
Indeed. And when you factor in the amount invested... yeah it looks less impressive. The question is how much more money needs to be invested to get this thing closer to reality? And not just in this instance. But for any instance e.g. a seahorse on a bike.