Claude Fable 5.2 tops new life-science image benchmark as tool use nearly doubles scores

Artificial Analysis's VIALS-AA test finds that letting models use tools matters almost as much as which model you pick Anthropic ’s Claude Fable 5.2 has taken first place on VIALS-AA, a new benchmark from Artificial Analysis that tests how well AI models read complex life-science images. It scored 67%, edging out Gemini 4 Carbon at 64% and GPT-6 Astra at 63%. The headline number is not the most interesting part of the results. That honor goes to tools: giving models access to them nearly doubled average scores across the board. One result makes the point best. Claude Haiku 5.5, Anthropic’s smaller and cheaper model, beat Claude Fable 5.2 when Haiku had tools and Fable did not. It also did so at a lower cost.

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