[jefftk]

> "Models with >75% writing similarity but massive price gaps. The cheap model writes the same way. You are paying for the brand.

* > ...*

* > Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite Preview 06-17 and Claude 3 Opus: 78.2%*

As someone who has tried to use many of these models for writing assistance, you're very wrong here. It really matters whether the model can get what I'm trying to communicate well enough to be helpful, or else I'll just write it myself. If you actually play with them a bit it's very clear these models are not substitutes. This goes for many on your list!

[lubujackson]

It makes sense. The cheaper models are often distilled versions, so they may ape language but miss the connective tissue that makes the entire output coherent.

[sixtyj]

Models have their “personalities” for sure but that expensive model is better is maybe just a confirmation bias.

(There was a blind test in Wine Enthusiasist magazine - even sommeliers didn’t recognize expensive wines from cheaper alternatives.)

But ofc if you get perfect results in one shot from expensive model, it is cheaper than wrangling with cheap model for an hour…(just an example).

But what I see hard is to navigating so many models available - HuggingFace has 2,769,687 models listed…

So every comparison like this or at models.dev or arena.ai is good.

[rogerrogerr]

I'd bet this whole thing is vibe'd out of nothingness and no human actually thought about whether saying "you are paying for the brand" makes any sense at all.

How the hell are companies and individuals not taking reputational hits for saying blatantly wrong things in AI-voice, under their name?

[anonzzzies]

Also are Gemini and Opus not both big brands? If it was some small ai shop vs opus then sure. So seems indeed to make little sense?

[Netcob]

Also, is it "paying for the brand" or "paying for the training"?