394 pointsby miniBill8 hours ago74 comments
  • adonovan7 hours ago
    This trend is far older than the AI era. The British magazine Private eye for many years in the 1990s had a running joke in which each issue displayed the new logos of old companies that had spent a fortune on rebranding. All of them were variations on circles.

    Naomi Klein in her book No Logo interprets it as a form of abstraction away from the passé and less profitable business of whatever concrete task those industries used to do, and towards outsourcing, branding, and financialization as an end in itself.

    • 7 hours ago
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  • SkyMarshal7 hours ago
    Claude is the only one that looks like an asshole. The rest are just circular, or not even that. Does every circle in the world look like an asshole? Car wheels? Pizzas? Camera Lenses? Ferris wheels? This is like a Rorschach test.
    • mirekrusin7 hours ago
      OpenAI is more... open. Maybe that's what they wanted to communicate.
      • gumby5 hours ago
        They should have chosen the domain goatse.ai
      • 7 hours ago
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      • lo_zamoyski7 hours ago
        A good question to pose to Sam.
        • isodev6 hours ago
          Or perhaps the logo is a depiction of us, the little "products" running around burning and paying for tokens... we're certainly more receptive after a few months of subscription softening-up.
    • rglover4 hours ago
      > Does every circle in the world look like an asshole?

      One man's trash...

    • yreg7 hours ago
      And if I had to choose, I would say that the Claude logo is probably the most distinct / imaginative out of the ones listed.
    • redanddead4 hours ago
      Claude is the worst offender

      GPT is kinda Celtic

      None of the Chinese labs have this buttholeness

      • dd8601fn3 hours ago
        OpenAIs annoys me. In the “can’t be unseen” way.

        The lines don’t actually work. Like they asked their bot to make a solomons knot style logo and it flubbed it.

        But apparently it was good enough for purpose.

    • Kiro6 hours ago
      Yes, a lot of commenters here (and the author) outing themselves.
    • chungusamongus7 hours ago
      Buttholes occur in nature all the time
      • subscribed6 hours ago
        If I not misheard (I don't know, just remember it), even the fetus development basically starts from the butthole.
        • tremon4 hours ago
          The embryo, not the fetus. Pretty sure that's referring to gastrulation, where the cell blob splits into multiple layers to start cell specialization; it does this by curving in on itself, and the cavity formed by this process becomes the intestinal tract: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastrulation#Protostomes_versu...

          However, that all happens at the embryonic stage (around day 9). At the point where the embryo has advanced sufficiently to be called a fetus (around week 9), the body has already sufficiently developed so that it's impossible to say where "fetal development" starts: https://embryology.med.unsw.edu.au/embryology/index.php?titl...

        • throwaway1737386 hours ago
          I read somewhere that the first invertebrate animal ate and excreted through the same butthole-shaped oriface.
          • rsa40465 hours ago
            Some still do: it's called a gastrovascular cavity, and is present in marine invertebrates such as Cnidaria (jellyfish, coral polyps, anemones), Ctenophores (comb jellies); Platyhelminthes (flatworms, tapeworms).
          • woadwarrior01an hour ago
            Yeah, I learnt about this from the amazing Max Bennett book: A brief history of intelligence.
        • chungusamongus6 hours ago
          That's beautiful
      • redanddead4 hours ago
        Evolutionary it’s one of the first things to develop, see coleopteres

        Millions of species are just tubes

        • wartywhoa233 hours ago
          Further generalized as tori in terms of topology, and humans are no exception.
      • warumdarum5 hours ago
        I wouldn't give much on the opinion of a topological donut. I should know, I'm one
    • elictronic6 hours ago
      I didn’t realize Claude owned half of the companies.
    • sapphirelimetea5 hours ago
      > Ferris wheels?

      Yes because the spokes are the lines that go to the center

      > Camera [apertures]?

      100% - they even "wink"

      > Does every circle in the world look like an asshole?

      Well every asshole is circular and every person has an asshole so we are biased toward seeing them everywhere. Any prominently placed circle will always trigger an evolutionary reaction. Do I:

      A) Sniff it

      B) Hump it

      C) Bite it

      D) Vibe code slop with it?

      Why do you think so many squares work in tech? It's because they don't hire assholes (circles)

      • jambalaya84 hours ago
        All due respect, but is anyone's asshole actually circular? Asking as most asshole seem to me to be squished closed and more starry-slat-like. Functionally speaking a circular asshole would be terrible; sphincters are important.

        The logos do look too canonically similar in general, though. :(

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      • redanddead4 hours ago
        Bite is always the answer
    • anal_reactor5 hours ago
      It's less about how most of them look like different stages of fisting party, and more about the fact that they have zero distinctive elements. Despite the amount of ads being shoved down my asshole, I still find it difficult to recognize different brands. Meta and Gemini being the worst offenders, if you show me these two logos in a week and ask what they are, I'd have zero clue they're even company logos. This is the level of failure we're talking about.

      I think this is peak millennialism because the design is supposed to be as inoffensive as possible and therefore shows absolutely nothing.

      • mondobe4 hours ago
        I'll trust you on this subject, anal_reactor
    • throx21pizza5 hours ago
      Great... now every time I look at a fresh pizza in the delivery box, cross-cut into 8 slices, I will think of Vonnegut's drawing and buttholes. Thanks a lot, SkyMarshal, for putting this association in my head!!
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  • VladVladikoff7 hours ago
    >Then came the redesign: a perfect circle with a subtle gradient and central void.

    I don’t see the gradient, their logo is black and white. Where’s the gradient? Was this written by an AI hallucinating?

    • yorwba7 hours ago
      OpenAI's own logo description was also written by you-know who: https://openai.com/brand/ The part I find funny is "right angles introduce the precision and structure that technology demands" while the logo is hexagonal and has no right angles at all. Precision and structure not included!
      • bob7787 hours ago
        I’m convinced this is a joke by Ives cause there’s no way he’d approve that description without checking it had 90 degrees
        • tokai5 hours ago
          Why not, he's a thieving idiot.
    • lpapez7 hours ago
      You are absolutely right! It was an honest mistake on my part. The absence of colour is the smoking gun.
    • Sankozi7 hours ago
      Lines are getting thinner closer to the center. This is not a gradient, but I understand what they meant. AI would use correct word for this.
    • bbx7 hours ago
      You're right, there's no gradient.
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    • airstrike7 hours ago
      Ironically, yes.
  • designerarvid8 hours ago
    They’re apertures; symbolically things emerge from them.

    “…but that’s really all a butthole is, an aperture” - Louis CK

    • eranation7 hours ago
      Aperture Science

      We do what we must because we can For the good of all of us, except the ones who are dead

      • Sharlin7 hours ago
        This explains so much.
      • inigyou7 hours ago
        We doodoo what we must.
    • estearum7 hours ago
      No, they're definitely the reverse. They're "the singularity." Most obviously clear in Grok's which is a literal pictogram of a black hole. But these are entities that suck things up, not produce things.

      The mental model of the superintelligence, to a true believer, is much more like a thing that consumes our world (hopefully for the better) rather than a thing that exists within the world and "produces stuff" in it.

      • robotbikes7 hours ago
        Perfect analogy for AI actually a reverse butt-hole that sucks up the internet like a blackhole and then you go to it and it shits out as much of an answer as you are willing to feed it by massaging it with electrical stimulation. And now our digital world is being contaminated with all of this digital fecal matter further hastening the enshittingulatity.
    • derektank7 hours ago
      Claude’s logo is closer to a dandelion than an aperture (though closer to a butthole than either)
  • sparsesignal7 hours ago
    Have you tried clicking the Claude logo? https://x.com/ertug/status/2072339797708849398
  • penteract7 hours ago
    This brought to my attention the following claim by OpenAI, regarding a logo which does not have any right angles:

    > right angles introduce the precision and structure that technology demands

    https://openai.com/brand/#:~:text=right%20angles

    • shakna7 hours ago
      > Our primary wordmark requires prescribed clear space and should NOT be used with the Blossom.

      Ironic missing space right there...

  • drgo24 minutes ago
    Logos reflect the ambient cultural trends. This is the Butthole Age
  • hnburnsy3 hours ago
    Openai's logo has always bugged me because it looks like three interlocking chain links that the designer did not align properly.
  • saltdoo7 hours ago
    Something about Claude logo looking like Kurt Vonnegut's drawing in Breakfast of Champions always made me hesitant to use Claude.
  • stared7 hours ago
    In a similar vein, some time ago I got curious why the Grafana logo looks like the Zerg emblem see https://www.reddit.com/r/grafana/comments/1o79zxy/grafana_lo....
  • seydor7 hours ago
    More like design by iPhone. They keep making the corners rounder and rounder, so the only way to be safe is a round logo.

    Of course this is a uniquely american problem. The world uses android

    • imhoguy7 hours ago
      Yeah, after recent Samsung One UI and Google icons change...hm.
  • hmstx6 hours ago
    "Why so many brands change their logos and look like everybody else".

    In the past year(s) I have noticed a few icons in my Android phone turning into the same thing.

    For a long time there was Uber, white on black. And then others thought white on black was the cool thing to join in on, making the reduced icons of the following look the same : Uber, Soundcloud (they kept their sigil at least), Swile, Qobuz, myNoise. I'm sure if I installed more junk I'd have seen more.

    Even myNoise who goes against tech grain! To their credit, they added an orange circle background to it sometime this spring. Soundcloud execs woke up and went back to their trademark orange. But, heck.

  • ozgung6 hours ago
    Before all of these AIs, HAL 9000 was designed as a shiny asshole with a glowing red light at its center. He was also a real asshole.
  • elif7 hours ago
    I'm gonna choose to believe they all involved AI in the design process and AI has a cheeky fetish for humiliating humans.
  • mtct888 hours ago
    Never thought about it.

    But now I can't unsee it.

  • elthor898 hours ago
    Thank you. I once asked Claude the same. It reminded me of the flag from the tv show community
    • LtWorf5 hours ago
      E pluribus anum
      • wartywhoa233 hours ago
        Fits great for companies whose business is devouring everything in sight, digesting it, and selling the end result to end users.
  • code_duck7 hours ago
    The OpenAI logo and “swirling hexagon” in general is reminiscent of the old logo of SNET (Southern New England Telephone), except it’s a pentagon. I used to draw this on my book covers at school to make life feel more engaging.

    https://logodix.com/logo/1065826.jpg

    • wartywhoa233 hours ago
      S-net. This thread got hairy real quick.
  • felooboolooomba5 hours ago
    I have a dirty mind, but I don't agree that all of them look like that. Claude is definitely looks like an external rectal sphincter. Grok is a ring that men have used for erectile dysfunction.
  • Arun20096 hours ago
    Jung might have seen a relation to circular maNDalas, which as per him were apparently everywhere: https://www.google.com/search?udm=2&q=circular+mandala

    IIRC, circular maNDalas as per Jung draw your attention towards its center, which is the most important part of the maNDala. For Jung, the circular maNDala represented the self - the totality of the psyche - with the center representing its organizing principle. I've noticed how this pattern naturally arises in circular flowers, with the petals serving to draw the bee in to the center where the reproductive structures and nectar are located.

    I realize that I am not really helping matters much, but thought would mention this anyway.

  • stared7 hours ago
    I am almost certain it is star or spark.

    But again, if someone is looking for assholes, they will find them.

    • inigyou7 hours ago
      Reminds me of the Telecom New Zealand rebranding. The old logo: the word Telecom, with lines through the "o" reminiscent of wires passing through a loading coil. The old name: Telecom (obviously) as in telecommunications. Conveys: We do phones. We do wires. We do long distance talking.

      The new logo: basically identical to Claude's current one but blue. The new name: Spark. Conveys: absolutely nothing, the blank slate business, our executives don't actually know what we do.

      • dingdingdang5 hours ago
        >> The new logo: basically identical to Claude's current one but blue. The new name: Spark. Conveys: absolutely nothing, the blank slate business, our executives don't actually know what we do.

        This is my experience as well, people drawn to leadership in our present time often have absolutely no idea about anything except the -idea- of business. Which of course makes things vaguely "professional" seeming while they effectively destroy businesses/organisations.

  • antaviana3 hours ago
    At least Grok has the courage to recognize it is a black hole.
  • vb-84487 hours ago
    I guess it has to do with the fact that everything is greyscale nowadays ... did you notice there are no more coloured cars, and the few that are there are all faded.
    • dnemmers7 hours ago
      I'm guessing limited car colors benefits the manufacturers more so than the customer. Less choice means less cost. Additionally, by avoiding 'polarizing' colors, they likely won't have issues with unsellable stock.
      • HPsquared5 hours ago
        Can also be a side effect of cars being so expensive, people want to minimise depreciation so choose conservative colours.
    • HPsquared7 hours ago
      I think because people are visually overstimulated from all the content in their phones, they prefer plain minimal design in the physical world.
      • LtWorf5 hours ago
        It's not about what people want, it's about what designers all sheepishly follow.
  • br0ceph2 hours ago
    Is it me, or AI company CEOs' faces, also look like buttholes?
  • genepope7 hours ago
    A butthole and a drain hole. Sounds like they are spot on. Give it to society in the butt and drain all societie's resources
  • nelox7 hours ago
    Once seen, it cannot be unseen. Thanks.
  • whycome7 hours ago
    The flag of India gives me that vibe.
  • frays7 hours ago
    > Why do AI company logos look like buttholes?

    What did AI say when you asked it? I got a slightly funny but reassuring answer.

  • adam_patarino7 hours ago
    When we started work on our logo for Rig I literally told our design agency we cant do butt holes
  • dvh5 hours ago
    Circle is the perfect shape. Take a rock, throw it in a water, you get circular ripple. Throw a brick, circular ripple. Throw a bicycle, circular ripple.
  • pikuseru5 hours ago
    If your butthole looks like Copilot I recommend you have a trip to the doctors for a check up
  • rayiner4 hours ago
    We won’t have real AGIs until they can see this kind of pattern in logos.
  • wartywhoa235 hours ago
    This is the worship of the eye of the Horus, of the entity that is both all-seeing and all-engulfing.

    Black Sun, Saturn (hexagon in OpenAI logo, anyone?), saturnalias and all the ensuing and tangential cults. The ouroboric cult of Singularity, etc.

    The clergy beyond those AI corporations uses those symbols to express the intent for power, total control and surveillance.

    The amount of esoteric obsession of those who print and own money to feed the AI beast, is staggering.

    To each according to his wits.

    • someguynamedq5 hours ago
      Do you know what the ouroboros represents?
      • wartywhoa233 hours ago
        The ever-failing attempt to attain the ever-eluding meaning that is always beyond all words and other means to express it.

        The knowledge that can never be caught into a fixed form. The Mercury of alchemists.

        The paradox of "war is peace", "slavery is freedom" and the like, and both the promise to solve it (by striving to close the gap between Ouroboros' mouth and tail), and eternal damnation of the elusive drift of all meanings in its unresolved state.

        A certain 3rd entity around which the duality of the visible world evolves and revolves, remaining out of its scope, which is better expressed by the Caduceus.

        Also, the attempt to conceal that invisible third hermetically, which always fails without failing, fractally and recursively generating all the spectrum of meanings from this single underlying paradox, the resolution of which was sought after by alchemists in the form of Lapis Philosophorum.

        I could go on and on, but this can only be experienced, not expressed.

  • lucasfcosta7 hours ago
    Fantastic article. It started like a joke but then added some pretty interesting notes (still using a funny tone).
  • ReptileMan7 hours ago
    Because they are ran by assholes?
  • fittingopposite3 hours ago
    That was a good and funny read
  • Mistletoe8 hours ago
    Form follows function but really it’s just probably modeled on the founders.

    Kudos to DeepSeek and Midjourney for doing something different.

    • Avicebron7 hours ago
      DeepSeek has the best logo.
  • HPsquared7 hours ago
    Their product is a result of digestion.
  • Leonard_of_Q7 hours ago
    A man goes to a psychiatrist. To start things off, the psychiatrist suggests they start with a Rorschach Test. He holds up the first picture and asks the man what he sees.

    "A man and a woman making love in a park," the man replies.

    The psychiatrist holds up the second picture and asks the man what he sees.

    "A man and a woman making love in a boat."

    He holds up the third picture.

    "A man and a woman making love at the beach."

    This goes on for the rest of the set of pictures; the man says he sees a man and a woman making love in every one of the pictures. At the end of the test, the psychiatrist looks over his notes and says, "It looks like you have a preoccupation with sex."

    And the man replies, "Well, you're the one with the dirty pictures."

  • ionwake5 hours ago
    Ill be honest I wasnt expecting this to be on point
  • zapkyeskrill7 hours ago
    It's good that it (they?) identified the smoking gun, and a fact that changed everything
  • minikomi7 hours ago
    Does the openai logo look like that because .. OpenAI? Then others followed suit?
  • mianos7 hours ago
    Same, I often wondered why the openai logo looks like an interpretation of goatse.
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  • yen2237 hours ago
    It's because OpenAI starts with an O, and an O looks like a butthole?
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  • thinkthatover7 hours ago
    imo: sub-conscious messaging to get you used to looking at a loading screen for a large portion of your workday
  • feverzsj7 hours ago
    That's the universal symbol of enshittification.
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  • dingdingdang7 hours ago
    Talking about bad design what on earth is going on with Amazon's new fav-icon, it's the same reddish-orange as Alibaba and Aliexpress and looks utterly unremarkable.
  • tda8 hours ago
    What is seen, cannot be unseen
  • dudul7 hours ago
    The logo for the Brazilian Institute of Oriental Studies is a masterpiece :-)
  • pharrington7 hours ago
    This blogger's gonna go nuts when they learn about the ouroboros.
  • estetlinus7 hours ago
    It the synthetic IQ goatse
  • farfatched8 hours ago
    AI plop.
  • MeteorMarc7 hours ago
    My son remarked: because they produce shit.
  • BatteryMountain7 hours ago
    What if, your brain is over-sexualized and you are obsessed with butthole, to the point your mind associate almost all round objects/shapes with buttholes? Maybe the logo's aren't the problem but rather degeneracy stuck in the brain. Now, think of a doughnut. Disgusting. :p
  • lofaszvanitt6 hours ago
    Someone watching too much porn :D.
  • ks20487 hours ago
    Walmart Logo
  • paulnpace7 hours ago
    Are people who use lots of AIs butthole surfers?
  • lo_zamoyski7 hours ago
    Interesting Rorschach test.
  • Alien1Being8 hours ago
    Perhaps to symbolise the quality of the material they extrude...

    Slop rhymes with plop.

  • j3th9n7 hours ago
    Because life in the womb starts at the butthole.
  • andrewstuart7 hours ago
    If I start an ai company I guarantee I will get a butthole logo and it will be animated.
  • jdw647 hours ago
    I also wrote about this before[1], and I think it's because the design itself ultimately targets specific consumers.

    [1]https://www.makonea.com/en-US/casual/programmers-sell-ox-not...

  • drstewart7 hours ago
    Why'd Bill Gates name his company after his thing?
  • _jsdp8 hours ago
    Reminded me of Gavin Belson Signature from Silicon Valley :-D
    • keyle7 hours ago
      A brilliantly designed horizontal logo to fit on server racks!
    • levzettelin7 hours ago
      "I like it! It's bold!" lolol
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  • throw83939r0r7 hours ago
    Maybe author watched too many dog videos? Every dog face looks like anus, it can defecate and lick in both direction. Once you go dog, entire world is your a toliet and every thing turns into buthole!

    Dead bird on road? Better lick it, not to miss its cloaka!