Claude Fable 5.2 Recreated a Photo of New York with Code on the First Try

X user Yuwen Lu demonstrated an experiment with Claude Fable 5.2: the model recreated a photograph of nighttime Manhattan in a single request using code in p5.js. Lu took the shot during a walk through Central Park and then asked the model to replicate it with brushstrokes in this JavaScript library for creative programming.

The original photo shows illuminated skyscrapers, a cloudy night sky, the sign of the Essex House hotel, and autumn foliage. One of the commenters identified the building in the left part of the frame as 111 West 57th Street, also known as the Steinway Tower. According to Lu, Fable 5.2 accomplished the task on the first attempt and achieved "insane photorealism."

About three weeks earlier, Lu had repeated the same experiment with Claude Opus 5.5. The result, in his words, was noticeably inferior to the Fable 5.2 version. The new generation consumed approximately 1% of the weekly limit of the Ultra plan.

Commenters noted that the model could essentially have written a script to break the photograph into pixel fragments and convert them into brushstrokes. Lu agreed with this explanation but added that previous models had not even managed such a task. Other users shared similar experiments with Opus 5.5, Gemini, p5.js, and ChatGPT, including stylizing images in the manner of oil painting.