Symbols have this insidious way of creeping up on us. One minute desktop computers are a modern marvel, the next, we’re wondering how a floppy disk became the internationally accepted icon for ‘save file’.
At the moment, one symbol is absolutely everywhere: ✨
That tiny ✨ emoji is on buttons, in product names, in taglines, in workflows. And everywhere you find it, it whispers – maybe with a little tinkle of chimes – ‘AI’. It promises the magical solution to everything. Need to write something? Press this. Need to generate some imagery? Click here. Need some generalised robotic help? Step this way, towards the sparkle. Embrace the sparkle.
Somehow, this symbol has become the representative for an industry that’s attracting billions of dollars of investment, and being touted as either our great saviour or our great destroyer – depending on who you ask. That’s a heavy responsibility for an emoji.
On the one hand, it makes a certain kind of sense.
For many of us, AI feels like magic. In that context, portraying it as something mystical taps into well-worn archetypes of the wise sage, or the all-knowing oracle. There’s a story already embedded in this symbol, and it’s one that makes technology more relatable, more engaging and more memorable for people using it.
It also simplifies complexity. Most people don’t understand how AI works, and representing it as a sparkle creates a quick explanation: you ask, it answers. The glimmer icon doesn’t require anyone to understand algorithms or models or neural networks; it’s straightforward, it’s intuitive and it’s easy to spot in a noisy visual environment.
It also humanises the experience. AI is a new market but it’s already a crowded one, and brands need something that quickly conveys who they are, what they do and why someone should use their tools. For many AI companies, the sparkle has become a quick way of capturing user trust (we’ll get round to the irony of this later on).
Last but not least, it’s an icon that’s filled with possibility. The sparkle encourages exploration and play, and people feel more comfortable engaging with AI if it’s presented as playful or whimsical, particularly in the context of education, gaming or creative tools. There’s no limits to what magic can achieve, and that’s an extremely alluring prospect for a potential user – and an extremely appealing marketing tool for a business.
But the sparkle is a pretty deceptive AI emblem.
That one simple emoji obscures a complex industry that’s the subject of much legal wrangling over its cavalier use of intellectual property – with writers and artists unhappy that their work has been exploited to train AI.
There’s also significant debate around its true environmental impact. Behind those AI tools and their auto-generated imagery and prose lies an enormous consumption of energy: data centres humming, GPUs running hot, water being piped in to cool them down.
It’s part of a troubling pattern in the tech sector, which wraps the most resource-intensive processes in the language and visuals of weightlessness. That sparkle says lightness, effortlessness and immediacy, while erasing the true environmental cost.
And it’s not just the impact on the planet. Suggesting that AI is ‘magical’ or some kind of all-knowing oracle hides the fact that it’s a fallible system. When the sparkle becomes a shorthand for omniscience, people develop unrealistic expectations – which erodes trust when those expectations aren’t met.
Instead of explaining the inner workings and impact to users, AI companies are covering them up with a ‘press here and don’t worry too much about it’ symbol. It means users are less likely to question how AI is making decisions, or using data, or sourcing information, or what kind of bias is embedded in its output.
This stifles accountability and takes away responsibility, which is particularly perilous in law or healthcare or finance, where scrutiny is essential. Over time, it’s easy to see how the gap between what people think AI can reliably do, and what it’s truly capable of, could take the shine off that sparkle.
Right now, we’re in the goldrush: everyone is claiming their intelligence is better than someone else’s, and the sector is drawing record amounts of investment. But while we’re all talking about the possibilities of generative and agentic and physical AI, not enough of us are talking about how they’ll differentiate themselves from one another, and how branding will help them do that. And the sparkle is rapidly losing its magic.
That’s partly because it’s ubiquitous. Whatever AI tool you use, the twinkle emoji is there, masking all that complex technology under a thick layer of glitter. In this context, what differentiates one company from another? If every AI tool is a sparkle, what makes your sparkle sparklier than the rest?
Every time a brand or designer deploys the AI sparkle, they’re reinforcing its dominance and reducing its power – and when design conventions turn into norms, they become invisible. Remember the era of blanding, when companies collectively decided that the best way to convey sophistication and success was to reduce their branding down to the most minimal, geometric, sans-serif-laced existence possible.
In this race to the bottom, blanding reached a cul de sac and businesses were forced to find a new direction that was rooted in something more emotive and spirited. This gave rise to Dropbox’s maximalist 2017 rebrand, Mailchimp’s analogue-style 2018 rebrand, Burger King’s retro 2021 refresh and Oatly’s irreverent tone-of-voice, amongst others.
So it’s not too late. AI is still at a formative stage, and we don’t have to inherit ✨ as the default.
We need to stop being obsessed with branding AI companies as AI, which doesn’t convey the ‘what’ or the ‘why’ of a business. The sector has to start thinking about the innate qualities of their products and what they bring to customers. And that value isn’t purely that it’s sparkly, magical AI. Remember, all technology feels magical until it doesn’t. Think of electricity, the home PC, smartphones, tablets, cars: every one an advancement that once felt wondrous, and is now thoroughly mundane.
The successful AI brands of the future won’t live and die on being AI. They’ll succeed because of what makes them unique and how they make themselves relevant to people’s lives – all things that can be achieved via strategic branding.
Once the shine is gone, it’s going to be less about the magic trick, and more about being prepared to pull back the curtain and reveal what’s behind it.
Working in brand or digital agencies, Johanna (she/her) wondered why the disciplines weren’t more joined up. As Creative Director and Partner at Output, she ensures both are developed with equal imagination and rigour. A design leader in a male-dominated industry, she’s interested in representing women and underserved groups, using her experience and learnings to empower a new generation of female designers.