AI: The Rush to Brand AI. RTZ #390

Barely two years in since OpenAI’s ChatGPT launch in November 2022, the AI logo that likely has the most mainstream traction and recognition to date is OpenAI. This early in this AI Tech Wave, if I ask you what is AI today in 2024, you could are likely to say:

And if I asked what’s their logo, of course OpenAI’s ChatGPT swirls into our minds

But as OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Meta, and now Apple especially all race to roll out Voice enabled AI products and services, there is a bit of a grab bag or emerging AI logos.

Especially as I discussed yesterday, some of these same companies are engaged in serious multi-billion dollar retrofits of their incumbent Voice Assistant brands like Apple Siri, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and others.

As Techcrunch lays it out in “Apple joints the race to find an AI icon that makes sense”:

“This week was an exciting one for the AI community, as Apple joined Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta and others in the long-running competition to find an icon that even remotely suggests AI to users. And like everyone else, Apple has punted.”

Above we have Apple Siri’s new logo top left, followed by Microsoft Copilot AI logo in the top middle, OpenAI’s GPT-4 Voice logo on the top right, Meta’s Meta AI logo on the bottom left, with Perplexity’s ‘spinning multicard’ logo third from the left and Apple’s new ‘Apple Intelligence’ logo for now on the bottom right. Techcrunch continues:

“Apple Intelligence is represented by a circular shape made up of seven loops. Or is it a circle with a lopsided infinity symbol inside? No, that’s New Siri, powered by Apple Intelligence. Or is New Siri when your phone glows around the edges? Yes.”

“The thing is, no one knows what AI looks like, or even what it is supposed to look like. It does everything but looks like nothing. Yet it needs to be represented in user interfaces so people know they’re interacting with a machine learning model and not just plain old searching, submitting, or whatever else.”

“Although approaches differ to branding this purportedly all-seeing, all-knowing, all-doing intelligence, they have coalesced around the idea that the avatar of AI should be non-threatening, abstract, but relatively simple and non-anthropomorphic.”

That last point on not anthropomorphizing AI prematurely is something I’ve written about, and agree should be thought through in terms of branding, marketing and product logos. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently echoed a similar sentiment:

“Expressing dislike for the term “artificial intelligence” itself which was coined in the 1950s, he said, “I think one of the most unfortunate names is ‘artificial intelligence’ — I wish we had called it ‘different intelligence’. Because I have my intelligence. I don’t need any artificial intelligence.”

“Satya Nadella also acknowledged the natural tendency to describe AI in human terms. He said that people seek ways to understand complex algorithms behind the software using relatable terms like “learning” to explain its function. This may strengthen in the future as companies release more advanced AI capable of real-time conversation, he said.”

This general idea is important as tech firms race to develop their AI brands and logos. Again, as Techcrunch continues to note:

“Early AI icons were sometimes little robots, wizard hats or magic wands: novelties. But the implication of the first is one of inhumanity, rigidity and limitation — robots don’t know things, they aren’t personal to you, they perform predefined, automated tasks. And magic wands and the like suggest irrational invention, the inexplicable, the mysterious — perhaps fine for an image generator or creative sounding board, but not for the kind of factual, reliable answers these companies want you to believe AI provides.”

“Corporate logo design is generally a strange concoction of strong vision, commercial necessity and compromise-by-committee. And you can see these influences at work in the logos pictured here.”

“The strongest vision goes, for better or worse, to OpenAI’s black dot. A cold, featureless hole that you throw your query into, it’s a bit like a wishing well or Echo’s cave.”

“In the meantime, these companies must still call it by a name and give it a “face” — though it is telling, and refreshing, that no one actually chose a face. But even here they are at the whim of consumers, who ignore GPT version numbers as an oddity, preferring to say [OpenAI] ChatGPT; who can’t make the connection with [Google] “Bard” but acquiesce to the focus-tested [Google] “Gemini”; who never wanted to [Microsoft] Bing things (and certainly not talk to the thing) but don’t mind having a [Microsoft] Copilot.”

“Apple, for its part, has taken the shotgun approach: You ask Siri to query Apple Intelligence (two different logos), which occurs within your Private Cloud Compute (unrelated to iCloud), or perhaps even forward your request to ChatGPT (no logo permitted), and your best clue that an AI is listening to what you’re saying is … swirling colors, somewhere or everywhere on the screen.”

“Until AI is itself a bit better defined, we can expect icons and logos representing it to continue to be vague, unthreatening, abstract shapes. A colorful, ever-shifting blob wouldn’t take your job, would it?”

Of course the companies are also racing to hire top talent to shape their AI Products, with both Anthropic and OpenAI coincidentally hiring ex-senior executives from Meta’s Instagram in recent weeks to be their ‘Chief Product Officers’ going forward.

And as these services move into voice driven AI services, we’ll likely see more experiments with brands and logos.

Apple of course has meaningful experience building iconic logos and brands over the decades, so they’re likely going to be front and center now that they’re getting going with ‘Apple Intelligence’ and beyond.

As these companies and more invest billions in developing, building and scaling their AI products and services in this AI Tech Wave, it’s logical that the next concurrent race in branding these services in front of billions of mainstream users.

We’re going to see a lot of logos roll by at an accelerating pace. Stay tuned.

(NOTE: The discussions here are for information purposes only, and not meant as investment advice at any time. Thanks for joining us here)