The pelican has looked very same-y across all frontier models, same color bike, same camera angle, etc. I suspect this challenge is already too embedded in the training data to be a good signal when it succeeds, and maybe even when it fails in pathological ways mirroring existing AI pelicans on the internet.

I'd say it's working great for its intended purpose. Keeps Simon on top of all these threads and funnels traffic to his site.

Was it ever a good test? How do you even objectively assess what a good pelican on a bike is anyway?

Variations of this comment have been posted for over a year. The pelican has now morphed into part of HN culture rather than a legitimate benchmark, but it's still valuable as a meme.