The Capybara Taxi Driver

Text-to-Image Photorealism

15 models were given the same prompt, and the community voted blind on which outputs looked best. How it works

This challenge seems to be difficult for models because it mixes reality with fiction. Most models struggle to keep the taxi realistic or loose instructions like placing the passenger not in the backseat.

Blind Vote This Challenge

#1 — GPT Image 2

Prompt

“Photorealistic scene inside a yellow New York taxi at night. A capybara is driving, wearing a yellow taxi driver cap and a dark jacket. It has a calm, professional expression and both front paws on the steering wheel. In the back seat sits a human businesswoman in a coat, looking at her phone with a completely normal, bored expression (as if this is just another normal ride). Through the windows you can see the streets of Manhattan at night with blurred lights. Realistic taxi interior, photorealistic, detailed fur and fabric, 35mm lens, night lighting with reflections, shallow depth of field.”

Voters were asked to judge by Photorealistic Realistic NYC taxi interior + night atmosphere Positioning of passenger Capybara wearing taxi driver cap

Challenge Rankings

15 models

#	Model	Price	¢/img	Elo
1	GPT Image 2 OpenAI	$$	3.9¢	1210
2	Z-Image Turbo Alibaba	$	0.5¢	1180
3	Seedream 4.5 ByteDance	$$	4¢	1158
4	Nano Banana Pro Google	$$$	6.7¢	1150
5	Wan 2.6 Alibaba	$$	3¢	1138
6	Nano Banana 2 Google	$$	2.2¢	1133
7	Wan 2.7 Pro Alibaba	$$$	7.5¢	1133
8	GPT Image 1 Mini OpenAI	$	0.5¢	1128
9	FLUX.2 [dev] Turbo fal	$	0.8¢	1112
10	Qwen Image 2.0 Pro Alibaba	$$$	7.5¢	1110
11	Wan 2.7 Alibaba	$$	3¢	1103
12	Grok Imagine Image Pro xAI	$$$	7¢	1098
13	Recraft V4 Pro Recraft AI	$$$$	25¢	1087
14	DALL-E 2 OpenAI	$$	1.6¢	991
15	DALL-E 3 OpenAI	$$	4¢	989

GPT Image 2 leads with a 1210 Elo and 71.4% win rate, though the budget-friendly Z-Image Turbo (1180 Elo) remains highly competitive at nearly one-eighth of the price and significantly faster generation speeds. Seedream 4.5 and Nano Banana Pro share the highest individual win rate of 87.5%, demonstrating superior handling of the complex passenger-placement constraints compared to lower-ranked premium models.