The generated pelican SVG renders differently across browsers because Safari is more tolerant of empty SVG <filter> elements than Firefox and Chrome, leading to the pelican disappearing in the latter two.

The author notes that the pelican image, created as an SVG, renders fully in Safari but loses the pelican in Firefox and Chrome because Safari tolerates empty SVG <filter> elements more permissively than the other browsers. ✦ AI generated

Simon Willison · Simon Willison's Weblog · 2026-08-13 · original ↗

One catch though: the pelican I showed here was rendered with Safari. Both Firefox and Chrome render it differently, due to Safari being more tolerant of empty SVG <filter> elements than those other two browsers. They still display the bicycle, but the pelican is missing entirely!

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