Comment by pwython
15 days ago
We all said it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46978726 (8 months ago)
> How many pelican riding bicycle SVGs were there before this test existed? What if the training data is being polluted with all these wonky results...
But Simon has demonstrated before that asking for any animal doing something silly will still get similar results from the same model.
I recently learned that there is an animated pelican riding a bicycle in 1988's Who Framed Roger Rabbit! https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/18/the-creative-spirit-of...
Do you think this might be a kind of subconscious origin of your idea? A second of a move you saw in your early life / teens stayed with you as an example of an absurd thing to draw?
It's possible, but I think it's more likely that I was inspired by the TikZ unicorn thing, my love of pelicans (we have thousands of them in the harbor ten minutes from my house), and my knowledge that bicycles are difficult for humans to draw.