Apple has joined the race to find an AI icon that makes sense. This week, Apple unveiled its AI icon, a circular shape made up of seven loops, representing Apple Intelligence. The icon is part of Apple’s long-running competition with Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and others to find an icon that suggests AI to users.
The challenge lies in the fact that 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.
The approaches to branding this purportedly all-seeing, all-knowing, all-doing intelligence have coalesced around the idea that the avatar of AI should be non-threatening, abstract, but relatively simple and non-anthropomorphic. The logos pictured here show these influences at work. The strongest vision goes to OpenAI’s black dot, a cold, featureless hole that you throw your query into, while Microsoft’s Copilot logo shows the biggest committee energy.
Apple Intelligence also includes what is likely the biggest update to Siri since it was announced more than a decade ago. Siri is no longer just a voice interface. Apple is also adding the ability to type queries directly into the system to access its generative AI-based intelligence. It’s an acknowledgment that voice is often not the best interface for these systems. Apple Intelligence is grounded in your personal data and context, building upon all of the personal data that users input into applications like Calendar and Maps.
Read more: techcrunch.com