Open-source Qwen 3.6-35B model outperformed Claude Opus 4.7 in image generation quality on a local laptop setup.

Qwen 3.6-35B-A3B, an open-source model, generated superior pelican artwork compared to Claude Opus 4.7

The comparison was conducted on a personal laptop, highlighting accessibility of capable open-source alternatives

This suggests open-source models are closing the performance gap with proprietary frontier AI systems

Simon Willison documented this real-world performance comparison in the article