Simon Willison’s Weblog

microsoft/phi-4. Here's the official release of Microsoft's Phi-4 LLM, now officially under an MIT license.

A few weeks ago I covered the earlier unofficial versions, where I talked about how the model used synthetic training data in some really interesting ways.

It benchmarks favorably compared to GPT-4o, suggesting this is yet another example of a GPT-4 class model that can run on a good laptop.

The model already has several available community quantizations. I ran the mlx-community/phi-4-4bit one (a 7.7GB download) using mlx-llm like this:

uv run --with 'numpy<2' --with mlx-lm python -c '
from mlx_lm import load, generate

model, tokenizer = load("mlx-community/phi-4-4bit")

prompt = "Generate an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle"

if tokenizer.chat_template is not None:
    messages = [{"role": "user", "content": prompt}]
    prompt = tokenizer.apply_chat_template(
        messages, add_generation_prompt=True
    )

response = generate(model, tokenizer, prompt=prompt, verbose=True, max_tokens=2048)
print(response)'

Here's what I got back.

Update: The model is now available via Ollama, so you can fetch a 9.1GB model file using ollama run phi4, after which it becomes available via the llm-ollama plugin.

# 8th January 2025, 5:57 pm / phi, generative-ai, ai, microsoft, llms, uv, pelican-riding-a-bicycle, llm, ollama

Veo 2 (via) Google's text-to-video model, now available via waitlisted preview. I got through the waitlist and tried the same prompt I ran against OpenAI's Sora last week:

A pelican riding a bicycle along a coastal path overlooking a harbor

It generated these four videos:

Here's the larger video.

# 16th December 2024, 11:31 pm / ai, google, generative-ai, pelican-riding-a-bicycle, text-to-video

<model-viewer> Web Component by Google (via) I learned about this Web Component from Claude when looking for options to render a .glb file on a web page. It's very pleasant to use:

<model-viewer style="width: 100%; height: 200px"
  src="https://static.simonwillison.net/static/cors-allow/2024/a-pelican-riding-a-bicycle.glb"
  camera-controls="1" auto-rotate="1"
></model-viewer>

Here it is showing a 3D pelican on a bicycle I created while trying out BlenderGPT, a new prompt-driven 3D asset creating tool (my prompt was "a pelican riding a bicycle"). There's a comment from BlenderGPT's creator on Hacker News explaining that it's currently using Microsoft's TRELLIS model.

# 13th December 2024, 6:46 pm / web-components, google, generative-ai, ai, 3d, blender, microsoft, claude, pelican-riding-a-bicycle

Sora (via) OpenAI's released their long-threatened Sora text-to-video model this morning, available in most non-European countries to subscribers to ChatGPT Plus ($20/month) or Pro ($200/month).

Here's what I got for the very first test prompt I ran through it:

A pelican riding a bicycle along a coastal path overlooking a harbor

The Pelican inexplicably morphs to cycle in the opposite direction half way through, but I don't see that as a particularly significant issue: Sora is built entirely around the idea of directly manipulating and editing and remixing the clips it generates, so the goal isn't to have it produce usable videos from a single prompt.

# 9th December 2024, 6:35 pm / video, generative-ai, openai, pelican-riding-a-bicycle, ai, text-to-video

New Gemini model: gemini-exp-1206. Google's Jeff Dean:

Today’s the one year anniversary of our first Gemini model releases! And it’s never looked better.

Check out our newest release, Gemini-exp-1206, in Google AI Studio and the Gemini API!

I upgraded my llm-gemini plugin to support the new model and released it as version 0.6 - you can install or upgrade it like this:

llm install -U llm-gemini

Running my SVG pelican on a bicycle test prompt:

llm -m gemini-exp-1206 "Generate an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle"

Provided this result, which is the best I've seen from any model:

Here's the full output - I enjoyed these two pieces of commentary from the model:

<polygon>: Shapes the distinctive pelican beak, with an added line for the lower mandible.
[...]
transform="translate(50, 30)": This attribute on the pelican's <g> tag moves the entire pelican group 50 units to the right and 30 units down, positioning it correctly on the bicycle.

The new model is also currently in top place on the Chatbot Arena.

Update: a delightful bonus, here's what I got from the follow-up prompt:

llm -c "now animate it"

Transcript here.

# 6th December 2024, 6:05 pm / gemini, llm, ai, llms, svg, releases, google, generative-ai, pelican-riding-a-bicycle

QwQ: Reflect Deeply on the Boundaries of the Unknown. Brand new openly licensed (Apache 2) model from Alibaba Cloud's Qwen team, this time clearly inspired by OpenAI's work on reasoning in o1.

I love the flowery language they use to introduce the new model:

Through deep exploration and countless trials, we discovered something profound: when given time to ponder, to question, and to reflect, the model’s understanding of mathematics and programming blossoms like a flower opening to the sun. Just as a student grows wiser by carefully examining their work and learning from mistakes, our model achieves deeper insight through patient, thoughtful analysis.

It's already available through Ollama as a 20GB download. I initially ran it like this:

ollama run qwq

This downloaded the model and started an interactive chat session. I tried the classic "how many rs in strawberry?" and got this lengthy but correct answer, which concluded:

Wait, but maybe I miscounted. Let's list them: 1. s 2. t 3. r 4. a 5. w 6. b 7. e 8. r 9. r 10. y Yes, definitely three "r"s. So, the word "strawberry" contains three "r"s.

Then I switched to using LLM and the llm-ollama plugin. I tried prompting it for Python that imports CSV into SQLite:

Write a Python function import_csv(conn, url, table_name) which acceopts a connection to a SQLite databse and a URL to a CSV file and the name of a table - it then creates that table with the right columns and imports the CSV data from that URL

It thought through the different steps in detail and produced some decent looking code.

Finally, I tried this:

llm -m qwq 'Generate an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle'

For some reason it answered in Simplified Chinese. It opened with this:

生成一个SVG图像，内容是一只鹈鹕骑着一辆自行车。这听起来挺有趣的！我需要先了解一下什么是SVG，以及如何创建这样的图像。

Which translates (using Google Translate) to:

Generate an SVG image of a pelican riding a bicycle. This sounds interesting! I need to first understand what SVG is and how to create an image like this.

It then produced a lengthy essay discussing the many aspects that go into constructing a pelican on a bicycle - full transcript here. After a full 227 seconds of constant output it produced this as the final result.

I think that's pretty good!

# 27th November 2024, 11:59 pm / llm, ollama, generative-ai, ai, qwen, llms, edge-llms, pelican-riding-a-bicycle, inference-scaling

Say hello to gemini-exp-1121. Google Gemini's Logan Kilpatrick on Twitter:

Say hello to gemini-exp-1121! Our latest experimental gemini model, with:

• significant gains on coding performance
• stronger reasoning capabilities
• improved visual understanding

Available on Google AI Studio and the Gemini API right now

The 1121 in the name is a release date of the 21st November. This comes fast on the heels of last week's gemini-exp-1114.

Both of these new experimental Gemini models have seen moments at the top of the Chatbot Arena. gemini-exp-1114 took the top spot a few days ago, and then lost it to a new OpenAI model called "ChatGPT-4o-latest (2024-11-20)"... only for the new gemini-exp-1121 to hold the top spot right now.

(These model names are all so, so bad.)

I released llm-gemini 0.4.2 with support for the new model - this should have been 0.5 but I already have a 0.5a0 alpha that depends on an unreleased feature in LLM core.

I tried my pelican benchmark:

llm -m gemini-exp-1121 'Generate an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle'

Since Gemini is a multi-modal vision model, I had it describe the image it had created back to me (by feeding it a PNG render):

llm -m gemini-exp-1121 describe -a pelican.png

And got this description, which is pretty great:

The image shows a simple, stylized drawing of an insect, possibly a bee or an ant, on a vehicle. The insect is composed of a large yellow circle for the body and a smaller yellow circle for the head. It has a black dot for an eye, a small orange oval for a beak or mouth, and thin black lines for antennae and legs. The insect is positioned on top of a simple black and white vehicle with two black wheels. The drawing is abstract and geometric, using basic shapes and a limited color palette of black, white, yellow, and orange.

Update: Logan confirmed on Twitter that these models currently only have a 32,000 token input, significantly less than the rest of the Gemini family.

# 22nd November 2024, 6:14 am / vision-llms, gemini, llm, google, generative-ai, ai, llms, logan-kilpatrick, pelican-riding-a-bicycle

Recraft V3. Recraft are a generative AI design tool startup based out of London who released their v3 model a few weeks ago. It's currently sat at the top of the Artificial Analysis Image Arena Leaderboard, beating Midjourney and Flux 1.1 pro.

The thing that impressed me is that it can generate both raster and vector graphics... and the vector graphics can be exported as SVG!

Here's what I got for raccoon with a sign that says "I love trash" - SVG here.

That's an editable SVG - when I open it up in Pixelmator I can select and modify the individual paths and shapes:

They also have an API. I spent $1 on 1000 credits and then spent 80 credits (8 cents) making this SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle, using my API key stored in 1Password:

export RECRAFT_API_TOKEN="$(
  op item get recraft.ai --fields label=password \
  --format json | jq .value -r)"

curl https://external.api.recraft.ai/v1/images/generations \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $RECRAFT_API_TOKEN" \
  -d '{
    "prompt": "california brown pelican riding a bicycle",
    "style": "vector_illustration",
    "model": "recraftv3"
  }'

# 15th November 2024, 4:24 am / ai, generative-ai, text-to-image, pelican-riding-a-bicycle

Pelicans on a bicycle. I decided to roll out my own LLM benchmark: how well can different models render an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle?

I chose that because a) I like pelicans and b) I'm pretty sure there aren't any pelican on a bicycle SVG files floating around (yet) that might have already been sucked into the training data.

My prompt:

Generate an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle

I've run it through 16 models so far - from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini and Meta (Llama running on Cerebras), all using my LLM CLI utility. Here's my (Claude assisted) Bash script: generate-svgs.sh

Here's Claude 3.5 Sonnet (2024-06-20) and Claude 3.5 Sonnet (2024-10-22):

Gemini 1.5 Flash 001 and Gemini 1.5 Flash 002:

GPT-4o mini and GPT-4o:

o1-mini and o1-preview:

Cerebras Llama 3.1 70B and Llama 3.1 8B:

And a special mention for Gemini 1.5 Flash 8B:

The rest of them are linked from the README.

# 25th October 2024, 11:56 pm / gemini, anthropic, llama, openai, ai, llms, svg, generative-ai, llm, cerebras, pelican-riding-a-bicycle