As a novel way to try out new model releases, Simon Willison is known for asking them to produce an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle. So for this blog, I thought I’d try my own benchmark, by combining my love of Brighton and sport.

Generate an SVG of a seagull playing basketball

Interestingly, both Llama and Gemini initially refused to provide an SVG, saying they are text-based and can’t create one. I asked them if they could produce code — which they confirmed they could — and then questioned how that was any different from generating an SVG. After that, they produced the SVG markup.

gpt-5

Claude 4 Sonnet

Grok 4 Heavy

Llama 4 Maverick

Gemini 2.5 Flash