Simon Willison reviews 2026 LLM trends including Claude Opus 4.5, GPT-5.1, and coding agents
Simon Willison gave a keynote at the WeAreDevelopers World Congress North America in San Jose on Friday, reviewing key AI trends from 2026. He noted that November saw the release of Claude Opus 4.5 and GPT-5.1, which improved coding agents from unreliable to reliable enough for daily use. Willison described his personal benchmark of generating an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle, which models…
Key points
- Claude Opus 4.5 and GPT-5.1 were released in November 2026 as incremental improvements
- Gemini 3.1 Pro succeeded in drawing a pelican riding a bicycle in February 2026
- Fable model was available for less than two weeks before a US government export control shut it down
The story so far
3 episodes →- Simon Willison reviews 2026 LLM trends including Claude Opus 4.5, GPT-5.1, and coding agentsthis story
2026 in LLMs (so far)
Simon Willison · 27 September 2026
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Coverage and discussion
1source- Hacker News discussion · 5 pointsnews.ycombinator.com
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