"Sparkles" emojis have come to
represent artificial intelligence:
The sparkles emoji has become a near-ubiquitous symbol that applications are powered by artificial intelligence. Even ChatGPT doesn’t know how it started.
If you’ve searched something on Google, written an essay on ChatGPT or used the AI features on Slack, Spotify or dozens of other apps, you’ve seen a version of the small stars used to indicate magic. Of the top 10 software companies by market capitalization, at least seven use a sparkles emoji in conjunction with their AI applications.
“This is the biggest example of an entire industry effectively saying, ‘OK, this symbol is our representation of this kind of feature,’” said Keith Broni, editor in chief of Emojipedia, a website that documents the meaning and usage of emojis.
[Since early 2021] the symbol has since spread like wildfire in the Silicon Valley hive mind. Design and marketing executives at software companies said they started using sparkles because everyone else was doing it, helping customers widely understand that the symbol meant AI.
Widespread adoption across the AI industry isn't surprising; sparkles are harmless, happy, and remote from the dystopian AI future that many are worried about. Your humble blogger, who limits his emoji insertions to a smiley face, doesn't buy into the premature joy and won't be sparkling any time soon.
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