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...
That's some crazy SVG generation:
https://aibenchy.com/compare/openai-gpt-6-astra-high/google-...
It took a while to test it, initially OpenRouter was giving Not Found errors for this model ID.
The Astra one looks pretty good except it's standing on the wrong side of the table
That's quite shocking, at a sufficiently advanced level we can make all non-realistic graphics purely out of SVGs, as they'd have good scaling for things like logos and app icons. I know it was technically and theoretically possible before AI but most people weren't spending hours tweaking SVG HTML. I remember making an SVG dark mode toggle icon and it took days to get it right, I assume it's one shottable now.
That photo looks pretty hilariously stupid, so this appears to be more of a first toe dip rather than some indication we can one-shot a previously difficult process.
Sure, it is a bit cartoonish but it’s relatively impressive. I do wonder what you would get if you asked for photorealism
At the bottom it says "Score 98.58", what measure is used for this score? It's kind of horrible, the perspective is all off (legs of the table makes that very obvious), the mouse/hamster has two mouths, a stub for a right paw, looks like left hand holds a melon on a stick or something, and there are pluses in the background for some reason. Not sure it'd call it "close to perfect" which the score seems to want to indicate.
Do you prefer the fable one?
It's more "correct" but looks a lot worse in my opinion:
https://aibenchy.com/compare/openai-gpt-6-astra-high/google-...
No, both of them look awful. I genuinely am unsure if this is a meme you're making that's going over my head...?
Well, this was the state of SVG generation until a few months ago:
https://aibenchy.com/showcase/?page=2#showcase=67fc6d6c8e4c3...
https://aibenchy.com/showcase/?page=3#showcase=c215b5c915da6...
Yeah, that's confusing, the score is for the entire benchmark, not for SVG generation only.
Good point about the mouths, I just noticed, lol
Imo, it's still better than most models, I personally like the stylized perspective.
You can view here all generations for all models: https://aibenchy.com/showcase/
I've replaced "Score" there with model ranking, to reduce confusion, thanks for the feedback!
Anyone had success using Astra as a Foundry model via Github Copilot? The error I get is that tooling is not available if reasoning has a value.
Its also available finally to Pro users! Just took 24 hours.
They gave out bankable resets for every day people on pro plans didn't get Astra. Given that, I wish they'd waited a few more days before activating it on my account :-D
That's a pretty genius internal incentive to move fast.
They haven’t activated Astra for me yet, I have two resets now. I’ve been using the opportunity to test out how good 5.6 Sol is at computer use asking it to generate stuff in Blender which has been… interesting
Edit: nevermind it JUST gave me a notification to use it!
> They gave out bankable resets for every day people on pro plans didn't get Astra.
Yeah, when I saw that Tweet I knew the person was saying it because they knew it'll be available within 24h.
Played in codex app a couple of hours today: it feels much faster than SOL, even if the TPS is half of it.
Just got it. European plus user here. Only codex, no chatgpt
I have GPT-6 access in Codex and OpenAI API now
I'm a Business plan user with Cyber verification enabled, FWIW.
Same just got access literally this minute, Pro user here, no Cyber verification but have passed my ID over to them back in 2024 or something, maybe at the ChatGPT 3 API launch or something?
Has there been anything published about if Astra uses different amount of usage from your subscription plan compared to Sol? Don't recall coming across that in the press releases.
is Azure for this actually ZDR?
What is the actual utility of using this model on Azure? It's twice as expensive, according to the link.
Do Azure offer something that simply hitting the OpenAI endpoint doesn't provide?
It's the same price as regular processing. You get guarantees microsoft give you, which are ones OpenAI won't (or require dedicated spend,) and you can use azure identities for access.
They’re ZDR and the OAI ones aren’t
OpenAI also has ZDR for enterprise accounts.
Compared to OpenAI flex? I'm pretty sure that is their batch processing endpoint, which is naturally cheaper.
I got it, but sadly no resets...
Damn I am so hyped
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You made an account just to post this?
Invoking simonw for pelicans pretty please.
That's over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49570643
is it finally available on openrouter and what about fable 5.1
that's literally what the link is for...
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.
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.
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.
Astra is the only model that correctly depicts occlusion of crank and leg, although interestingly, at max and medium levels (not in between).
Luna is my go to daily model it's great value
Interesting that all of the bikes are turquoise colored, except for the medium effort
Oh my goodness. I was not prepared for Luna on "none".
Reminded me of https://clocks.brianmoore.com/
Haiku the GOAT
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.
I have a feeling they've been doing that for a while now, even if unintentional, as it's such a well known benchmark
Luna's price seems off
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It's simonw. It's interesting to see their pelican benchmark, another comment by a different author elsewhere here shows some very good SVG generation too.
How are we supposed to know if Astra is frontier without the pelican?
It's absolutely related.
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