My personal benchmark for new models has been to compare video making skills with something like remotion. Usually reveals if they have any "taste" or outside the box thinking.

I'm starting to not trust any "benchmarks" when it comes to frontier models at least. As an example Sol feels the most "gets stuff done" but has zero taste, or any capability to surprise.

And for frontier models I go one step ahead and try to recreate a complex animation video, with the ability for the model to review its own work. And at this Fable is still the top one. Ex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDAeAuYyl0E (recreation of Claude announcement video) and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSsVNtGPOIg (recreation of a fireship video). Sol did something similar but you can instantly tell its AI slop from very small things, and it just has no narrative or thought put into the writing.

https://mesmer.tools/benchmarks/ai-video-generation , I usually put basic ones here.

And on creativity at least visually, Gemini 3.1 pro is somehow still up there. But its really hindered by its inability to use tool calls effectively or make a long term plan.