Simon Willison

The Pelican comparison grid for Astra is pretty interesting

Read the original on Simon Willison →

Simon Willison tested GPT‑6 Astra by generating SVG pelicans riding bicycles at various reasoning levels and compared the results to GPT‑5.6 Sol, Terra, and Luna. The Astra pelicans consistently outperformed the other models, especially at low and xhigh reasoning levels, and even the Astra max version produced high‑quality images. Astra also used fewer tokens and was roughly twice as expensive as Sol, yet its low‑level output was cheaper and superior to any Sol model.

Machine-generated by The Flow from the publisher's headline and feed description — not written or checked by a human. The full article lives at Simon Willison.

Simon Willison
Sep 29

GPT 6.1 Sol: Near-Astra intelligence for a fifth of the price

Simon Willison comments on GPT 6.1‑Sol, describing it as "Near‑Astra intelligence for a fifth of the price." He notes that the model’s pelican illustrations are similar to those of the GPT‑6 family and provides links to the live‑blog of the keynote and to the pelican images. The post is tagged with AI, OpenAI, generative‑AI, LLMs, and playful references to pelican‑riding‑a‑bicycle.

Simon Willison
Sep 5

Introducing GPT-6 Astra for developers

Simon Willison introduces GPT‑6 Astra, a new model that offers improved attention to detail, better prompt comprehension, and the ability to generate more sophisticated outputs. The model excels at creating 3D renderings, producing detailed scenes such as gardens, shipyards, animals, cityscapes, and even Dyson spheres. Willison highlights its whimsical creativity, noting examples like a pelican wearing a red neckerchief riding a bicycle.

Simon Willison
Oct 6

Mistral Large 4

The article is a comment by Simon Willison on the Mistral Large 4 model, posted on Hacker News. He discusses the saturation of benchmarks and humorously references a benchmark involving an armadillo in fishnet tights jaywalking on Mars, comparing the performance of several large language models including Claude Opus, GPT, Gemini, and Mistral Large 4.

Simon Willison
Oct 12

llm-meta-ai 0.2

The article announces the release of llm-meta-ai 0.2, featuring Meta AI’s new Muse Wonder and Muse Wonder Full models, described as the most capable models yet. These models are suggested to be Meta’s first Fable‑class models, with Artificial Analysis scoring Muse Wonder (Max) equivalent to GPT‑6.1 Sol. The author updated the llm-meta-ai plugin to support the new model and provides pelican‑drawing benchmarks across six reasoning levels, noting significant improvements over previous releases.

Simon Willison
Oct 13

llm-gemini 0.35

The article announces the release of llm‑gemini 0.35, adding support for the new Gemini 4 Argon model available through the Gemini API and for customers on the $100/month subscription plan. It highlights Argon’s pricing—$2/million input and $10/million output at launch, with a planned price increase on December 1st—and compares its cost-effectiveness to other models, noting it remains cheaper than many competitors even after the increase. The post also showcases example SVG outputs and creative illustrations generated by Argon, such as a pelican riding a bicycle and an armadillo in fishnet tights on Mars.

Simon Willison
Sep 22

Claude Opus 5.5, GPT-6 Sol, GPT-6 Luna, and a new price war

The article reports the release of new AI models: Claude Opus 5.5 by Anthropic and GPT‑6 Sol and GPT‑6 Luna by OpenAI, noting that GPT‑6 variants are priced at half the cost of their GPT‑5.6 counterparts. It provides a detailed pricing table comparing input, cached input, and output costs across several models, highlighting how GPT‑6 Luna is among the cheapest ever offered by OpenAI. The author also comments on visual differences in model outputs, noting that GPT‑6 outputs are more muted compared to GPT‑5.6.