ben's banner
ben's profile picture

ben

@contraben • 15,021 subscribers

building @contra and @contralabs_ai

Shorts

Fable is back (enjoy the final hours of in-sub usage) so we made it fight Anthropic's Opus 4.8: >5 real landing page and portfolio briefs, built in Claude Code, >judged blind by 9 working designers across 90 matchups. Fable's best brief won 88.9% of its head-to-heads. Its worst output only won 11.1%. The difference was the brief 🧵

Fable is back (enjoy the final hours of in-sub usage) so we made it fight Anthropic's Opus 4.8: >5 real landing page and portfolio briefs, built in Claude Code, >judged blind by 9 working designers across 90 matchups. Fable's best brief won 88.9% of its head-to-heads. Its worst output only won 11.1%. The difference was the brief 🧵

103,773 views

For Anthropic’s Claude Design, your opening prompt sets the ceiling of the project. If your prompt is a comprehensive brief, it will land somewhere near production-ready Seems obvious, but here is something interesting we observed: one designer wrote: >16 prompts >climbed in specificity over the session >and still finished worse than they started A single "reconsider" prompt at iteration 2 tanked output quality by -0.7 and the session never recovered. 2/3 of every prompt typed across all 5 sessions was refinement or correction. TLDR: Your first move is the whole game. and prompting is an art. What a time to be alive.

For Anthropic’s Claude Design, your opening prompt sets the ceiling of the project. If your prompt is a comprehensive brief, it will land somewhere near production-ready Seems obvious, but here is something interesting we observed: one designer wrote: >16 prompts >climbed in specificity over the session >and still finished worse than they started A single "reconsider" prompt at iteration 2 tanked output quality by -0.7 and the session never recovered. 2/3 of every prompt typed across all 5 sessions was refinement or correction. TLDR: Your first move is the whole game. and prompting is an art. What a time to be alive.

228,625 views

It's safe to say Meta is back in the game. We ran a blind "style-transfer" tournament with AI at Meta's new Muse Image vs >OpenAI's GPT Image 2 >Google Gemini's Nano Banana Pro >BlackForestLabsAI - Unofficial's FLUX.2. on 10 real world briefs, 55 tournaments, with every output ranked blind by professional working creatives. GPT won the most, but Muse placed top-two in 59%, more than any other model, already beating Nano Banana Pro 👀 (Image reference created with Muse Image btw)

It's safe to say Meta is back in the game. We ran a blind "style-transfer" tournament with AI at Meta's new Muse Image vs >OpenAI's GPT Image 2 >Google Gemini's Nano Banana Pro >BlackForestLabsAI - Unofficial's FLUX.2. on 10 real world briefs, 55 tournaments, with every output ranked blind by professional working creatives. GPT won the most, but Muse placed top-two in 59%, more than any other model, already beating Nano Banana Pro 👀 (Image reference created with Muse Image btw)

36,282 views

In our Anthropic Claude Design study, 5 designers approved a design system before they typed their first prompt. >Brand palette >type system >components the whole thing all set up. Only 1 of them named any of it in their opening prompt. That designer was the only one to finish production-ready. The other 4 assumed Claude would carry the system over. It didn't. TLDR: Claude doesn't reliably carry the design system you just approved. If you don't name it in the prompt, it doesn’t exist. It's never been a better time to be a designer, but you must learn the art of the prompt.

In our Anthropic Claude Design study, 5 designers approved a design system before they typed their first prompt. >Brand palette >type system >components the whole thing all set up. Only 1 of them named any of it in their opening prompt. That designer was the only one to finish production-ready. The other 4 assumed Claude would carry the system over. It didn't. TLDR: Claude doesn't reliably carry the design system you just approved. If you don't name it in the prompt, it doesn’t exist. It's never been a better time to be a designer, but you must learn the art of the prompt.

163,778 views

hey X fam Contra Labs (ICML 26🇰🇷) is hiring multiple Strategic Project Leads in NY/SF to work on some very, very... cool projects tag someone who could be interested

hey X fam Contra Labs (ICML 26🇰🇷) is hiring multiple Strategic Project Leads in NY/SF to work on some very, very... cool projects tag someone who could be interested

20,789 views

who's at Config next week ? Contra Labs is hosting our annual "Config Kick Off Party" on Monday the 22nd for >creatives >researchers >designers to talk about the latest AI powered workflows, the role of human taste in creative work + all things creative intelligence. + a live panel with product leaders from Open AI, Qiver, Krea, and of course Figma See you there! (link in comments)

who's at Config next week ? Contra Labs is hosting our annual "Config Kick Off Party" on Monday the 22nd for >creatives >researchers >designers to talk about the latest AI powered workflows, the role of human taste in creative work + all things creative intelligence. + a live panel with product leaders from Open AI, Qiver, Krea, and of course Figma See you there! (link in comments)

29,052 views

We benchmarked @openai’s ChatGPT Images 2.0 against the top image models. It won everything. Then we asked the harder question: can brand designers really ship with it? Here's where the model breaks.

We benchmarked @openai’s ChatGPT Images 2.0 against the top image models. It won everything. Then we asked the harder question: can brand designers really ship with it? Here's where the model breaks.

30,778 views

For Google Gemini, your prompt is the difference between Client V1 and Production Ready. We observed 10 designers going through a real world campaign workflow: >Hero stills >Social cuts >Secondary assets total: 29 deliverables. Only 24% were "Production Ready" And they all wrote prompts the same way. Below are the prompts and outputs 👇⬇️

For Google Gemini, your prompt is the difference between Client V1 and Production Ready. We observed 10 designers going through a real world campaign workflow: >Hero stills >Social cuts >Secondary assets total: 29 deliverables. Only 24% were "Production Ready" And they all wrote prompts the same way. Below are the prompts and outputs 👇⬇️

21,205 views

We ran a blind head-to-head on the leading image models for one specific job: >product detail shots. Seedream 5.0 Lite (BytePlus, ByteDance) beat the flagship models from Google, OpenAI, and Black Forest Labs. It won 2 out of 3 times.

We ran a blind head-to-head on the leading image models for one specific job: >product detail shots. Seedream 5.0 Lite (BytePlus, ByteDance) beat the flagship models from Google, OpenAI, and Black Forest Labs. It won 2 out of 3 times.

26,137 views

Wow, killer work from the Krea team 👀 Krea 2 Large is the #2 style-transfer model, already closing in on GPT Image 2. Average Style Fidelity gap from Krea's latest model to OpenAI's GPT Image 2: 0.14 points. Gap from Krea to the rest of the field: more than 4x larger. Full study below.

Wow, killer work from the Krea team 👀 Krea 2 Large is the #2 style-transfer model, already closing in on GPT Image 2. Average Style Fidelity gap from Krea's latest model to OpenAI's GPT Image 2: 0.14 points. Gap from Krea to the rest of the field: more than 4x larger. Full study below.

20,065 views

Can Adobe Firefly's "Edit" feature compete with Photoshop? Select a region, describe the fix, keep the rest of the frame intact. That's the pitch. Here’s what we observed across 4 sessions and 8 targeted edits with real working creatives: >1 edit landed cleanly 🥇 >5 landed partial 🥈 >2 missed entirely ❌ Firefly understood the request almost every time, it just couldn't hold the rest of the image still while executing it. Avoiding drift is hard. In the partials, the target moved but something else broke. >A product lost prominence / focus >A shadow stayed broken >A new artifact appeared on the wall while the format crept closer to the brief Social was the hardest category. 0 clean wins across 4 attempts. With social content, crop, pose, and product placement ARE the deliverable, so any drift fails the job. TLDR: Firefly can edit like Photoshop, but avoiding drifts is the real challenge. I personally use this feature a lot, how have you solved for this ?

Can Adobe Firefly's "Edit" feature compete with Photoshop? Select a region, describe the fix, keep the rest of the frame intact. That's the pitch. Here’s what we observed across 4 sessions and 8 targeted edits with real working creatives: >1 edit landed cleanly 🥇 >5 landed partial 🥈 >2 missed entirely ❌ Firefly understood the request almost every time, it just couldn't hold the rest of the image still while executing it. Avoiding drift is hard. In the partials, the target moved but something else broke. >A product lost prominence / focus >A shadow stayed broken >A new artifact appeared on the wall while the format crept closer to the brief Social was the hardest category. 0 clean wins across 4 attempts. With social content, crop, pose, and product placement ARE the deliverable, so any drift fails the job. TLDR: Firefly can edit like Photoshop, but avoiding drifts is the real challenge. I personally use this feature a lot, how have you solved for this ?

13,452 views

Convergence on quality, divergence on taste. >Across our Contra Labs benchmark >12 frontier models from OpenAI Google DeepMind Black Forest Labs ByteDance >across 5 creative domains ~15,000 evaluator judgments this theme dominated.

Convergence on quality, divergence on taste. >Across our Contra Labs benchmark >12 frontier models from OpenAI Google DeepMind Black Forest Labs ByteDance >across 5 creative domains ~15,000 evaluator judgments this theme dominated.

16,690 views

"Spotify Wrapped" was built with Rive. LinkedIn's "Year End Review" was built in Rive. The UI inside of every BMW is built with Rive. And now, Rive just launched Scripting! Want to try it out, and win $5k? Today we are launching the "Scripting with Rive" challenge on Contra. What are you going to build ?

"Spotify Wrapped" was built with Rive. LinkedIn's "Year End Review" was built in Rive. The UI inside of every BMW is built with Rive. And now, Rive just launched Scripting! Want to try it out, and win $5k? Today we are launching the "Scripting with Rive" challenge on Contra. What are you going to build ?

32,912 views

Only one Adobe Firefly video prompt from our research hit production-ready on the first generation. Prompt in comments 👀 It looks you have to direct the camera as much as the model to get the most out of Firefly. Every other video session in our research needed a revision. Revising the first frame is where Firefly broke: >motion failures (temporal flicker, motion continuity, physics in motion) carried 60% of video's issue mix once designers re-prompted. TLDR: in Adobe Firefly, the camera does a lot of the work. Bake it into the first prompt and the video lands. Its by far the best time to be a creative.

Only one Adobe Firefly video prompt from our research hit production-ready on the first generation. Prompt in comments 👀 It looks you have to direct the camera as much as the model to get the most out of Firefly. Every other video session in our research needed a revision. Revising the first frame is where Firefly broke: >motion failures (temporal flicker, motion continuity, physics in motion) carried 60% of video's issue mix once designers re-prompted. TLDR: in Adobe Firefly, the camera does a lot of the work. Bake it into the first prompt and the video lands. Its by far the best time to be a creative.

12,847 views

oh my 🚨 FLORA © x Contra

oh my 🚨 FLORA © x Contra

12,373 views

Videos

LIVE
1.2k

Anya Rossi

sweetdream.ai

SweetDream.aiSponsored•Livecam
Streaming Now

Watch Anya Live

Anya is streaming live right now! Join her private show and enjoy exclusive content.

HD live stream
Exclusive private shows
1.2k viewers online

Free preview available • Premium content

Introducing Contra Payments. The first payments platform that lets you sell to AI Agents. RT + Comment “Contra” and I’ll send you 100 products AI agents are looking for.
1:36
contraben's profile picture

Introducing Contra Payments. The first payments platform that lets you sell to AI Agents. RT + Comment “Contra” and I’ll send you 100 products AI agents are looking for.

ben

2,279,347 views • 5 months ago

Introducing the Human Creativity Benchmark. The first eval that scores AI models the way creative experts do.
0:40
contraben's profile picture

Introducing the Human Creativity Benchmark. The first eval that scores AI models the way creative experts do.

ben

379,531 views • 2 months ago

We all know AI has a "taste" problem. We measured it. It’s (somewhat) fixable, but AI judges can't replace human creative judgement. Introducing Design Crit. New research from Contra Labs and Lica World, now live on arXiv.org
0:43
contraben's profile picture

We all know AI has a "taste" problem. We measured it. It’s (somewhat) fixable, but AI judges can't replace human creative judgement. Introducing Design Crit. New research from Contra Labs and Lica World, now live on arXiv.org

ben

134,060 views • 1 month ago

Introducing Contra Labs. The first frontier data and evaluation lab for Creative AI.
1:54
contraben's profile picture

Introducing Contra Labs. The first frontier data and evaluation lab for Creative AI.

ben

447,523 views • 3 months ago

Big congrats to the Ideogram team on v4. We tested it blind against Google Gemini 3.1, Grok Grok Imagine, and Black Forest Labs FLUX.2 [max] with >10 professional designers > across 240 images Quick thread on it's strengths and how to prompt it 👇
0:24
contraben's profile picture

Big congrats to the Ideogram team on v4. We tested it blind against Google Gemini 3.1, Grok Grok Imagine, and Black Forest Labs FLUX.2 [max] with >10 professional designers > across 240 images Quick thread on it's strengths and how to prompt it 👇

ben

26,597 views • 1 month ago

It's Launch Day Contra and this is one of our biggest launches yet. 🚀. Today we are launching Portfolio Magic, an AI powered portfolio builder with built in 💸payments 📈analytics 💰contracts, proposals, invoices + a ton of platform upgrades as well. More in the 🧵
0:48
contraben's profile picture

It's Launch Day Contra and this is one of our biggest launches yet. 🚀. Today we are launching Portfolio Magic, an AI powered portfolio builder with built in 💸payments 📈analytics 💰contracts, proposals, invoices + a ton of platform upgrades as well. More in the 🧵

ben

180,411 views • 2 years ago

the biggest complaints we get at Contra are 1. not enough leads 2. clients dont respond to applications the reality is, job boards are dead.. the best way to find new projects is from your own network. Today we are launching Indy, and its going to change everything.
0:30
contraben's profile picture

the biggest complaints we get at Contra are 1. not enough leads 2. clients dont respond to applications the reality is, job boards are dead.. the best way to find new projects is from your own network. Today we are launching Indy, and its going to change everything.

ben

59,157 views • 11 months ago

Such a great conversation with Chris Leavens from Age of Learning. We discussed his journey from being a freelance illustrator, to working with Stewart Butterfield on Tinyspeck that turned into Slack... and then his journey at Disney creating the top two apps in the app store. I actually learned about Tinyspeck and Glitch from andrew chen's book "The Cold Start Problem". Chris also talks about how Age of Learning uses tools like Rive, Scenario and Figma to make industry leading education products and mobile apps. We even discussed Procreate 's genAI stance vs Adobe's head first dive into AI tooling. So much wisdom on how to evolve and stay true to yourself as a creative. Thanks again Chris for being on the show and sharing your knowledge with the Contra community! As always, on X first!
45:22
contraben's profile picture

Such a great conversation with Chris Leavens from Age of Learning. We discussed his journey from being a freelance illustrator, to working with Stewart Butterfield on Tinyspeck that turned into Slack... and then his journey at Disney creating the top two apps in the app store. I actually learned about Tinyspeck and Glitch from andrew chen's book "The Cold Start Problem". Chris also talks about how Age of Learning uses tools like Rive, Scenario and Figma to make industry leading education products and mobile apps. We even discussed Procreate 's genAI stance vs Adobe's head first dive into AI tooling. So much wisdom on how to evolve and stay true to yourself as a creative. Thanks again Chris for being on the show and sharing your knowledge with the Contra community! As always, on X first!

ben

53,988 views • 1 year ago

6. You can make absurd amounts of money on Contra. Creatives have changed their lives with Contra: Daniel G Bright made $250k in the last year on Contra. Ismel Figueroa made 100K.
0:32
contraben's profile picture

6. You can make absurd amounts of money on Contra. Creatives have changed their lives with Contra: Daniel G Bright made $250k in the last year on Contra. Ismel Figueroa made 100K.

ben

14,649 views • 5 months ago

hey X fam Contra Labs is hiring an Human Computer Interaction Researcher in SF / NY. Tag someone who could be interested.
0:20
contraben's profile picture

hey X fam Contra Labs is hiring an Human Computer Interaction Researcher in SF / NY. Tag someone who could be interested.

ben @ CVPR

10,921 views • 3 months ago

Framer is breaking the internet. I’ve been a user and fan since 2020, when we were prototyping the early versions of Contra. Can't believe I get to say this, but today, Framer is launching their new expert network, powered by Contra Want to become a framer expert? ->
0:25
contraben's profile picture

Framer is breaking the internet. I’ve been a user and fan since 2020, when we were prototyping the early versions of Contra. Can't believe I get to say this, but today, Framer is launching their new expert network, powered by Contra Want to become a framer expert? ->

ben

55,411 views • 3 years ago

Over the last month, Contra teamed up with DANN© to survey over 500,000 independent creators to learn about the tools they use to run their businesses. Excited to share the winners and launch the "Creator Tools Show" here on X, where we discuss the jobs of the future with the people inventing them and interview the creators behind the tools we all use every day. There were some obvious winners like Figma, Canva, Adobe, Framer, Webflow, but also a bunch of new and up and coming tools like Spline, FlutterFlow and Rive all used by creators to run their businesses. You check out all of the winners and honorees here:
53:30
contraben's profile picture

Over the last month, Contra teamed up with DANN© to survey over 500,000 independent creators to learn about the tools they use to run their businesses. Excited to share the winners and launch the "Creator Tools Show" here on X, where we discuss the jobs of the future with the people inventing them and interview the creators behind the tools we all use every day. There were some obvious winners like Figma, Canva, Adobe, Framer, Webflow, but also a bunch of new and up and coming tools like Spline, FlutterFlow and Rive all used by creators to run their businesses. You check out all of the winners and honorees here:

ben

38,176 views • 2 years ago

People ask me in dm's how to build reputation and get more clients on Contra, but so many people have no idea we have free world class proposal, invoice, escrow and contract tools that you can use to run your business and supercharge your reputation and discoverability at the same time. + it's 100% commission FREE. You can get paid out via bank accounts, paypal, payoneer, USDC etc. We also have some huge upgrades coming to our payouts as well, making it even cheaper for your clients to pay you on Contra. We want to make Contra the best place on the internet to run your business, find new clients and connect with other creatives. More to come 👀
0:20
contraben's profile picture

People ask me in dm's how to build reputation and get more clients on Contra, but so many people have no idea we have free world class proposal, invoice, escrow and contract tools that you can use to run your business and supercharge your reputation and discoverability at the same time. + it's 100% commission FREE. You can get paid out via bank accounts, paypal, payoneer, USDC etc. We also have some huge upgrades coming to our payouts as well, making it even cheaper for your clients to pay you on Contra. We want to make Contra the best place on the internet to run your business, find new clients and connect with other creatives. More to come 👀

ben

17,334 views • 1 year ago

No more content to load