4 ms·
Why do AI company logos look like buttholes? (2025)
- Mistletoe 3mo agoForm follows function but really it’s just probably modeled on the founders. Kudos to DeepSeek and Midjourney for doing something different.
- Avicebron 3mo agoDeepSeek has the best logo.
- farfatched 3mo agoAI plop.
- mtct88 3mo agoNever thought about it. But now I can't unsee it.
- designerarvid 3mo agoThey’re apertures; symbolically things emerge from them. “…but that’s really all a butthole is, an aperture” - Louis CK
- eranation 3mo agoAperture Science We do what we must because we can For the good of all of us, except the ones who are dead
- derektank 3mo agoClaude’s logo is closer to a dandelion than an aperture (though closer to a butthole than either)
- estearum 3mo agoNo, 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.
- robotbikes 3mo agoPerfect 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.
- elthor89 3mo agoThank you. I once asked Claude the same. It reminded me of the flag from the tv show community
- LtWorf 3mo agoE pluribus anum
- wartywhoa23 3mo agoFits great for companies whose business is devouring everything in sight, digesting it, and selling the end result to end users.
- tda 3mo agoWhat is seen, cannot be unseen
- _jsdp 3mo agoReminded me of Gavin Belson Signature from Silicon Valley :-D
- keyle 3mo agoA brilliantly designed horizontal logo to fit on server racks!
- levzettelin 3mo ago"I like it! It's bold!" lolol
- Alien1Being 3mo agoPerhaps to symbolise the quality of the material they extrude... Slop rhymes with plop.
- stared 3mo agoIn 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_logo_and_zerg_emblem/ https://www.reddit.com/r/grafana/comments/1o79zxy/grafana_lo....
- VladVladikoff 3mo 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?
- airstrike 3mo agoIronically, yes.
- bbx 3mo agoYou're right, there's no gradient.
- Sankozi 3mo agoLines 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.
- yorwba 3mo agoOpenAI's own logo description was also written by you-know who: https://openai.com/brand/ 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!
- lpapez 3mo agoYou are absolutely right! It was an honest mistake on my part. The absence of colour is the smoking gun.
- vb-8448 3mo agoI 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.
- HPsquared 3mo agoI think because people are visually overstimulated from all the content in their phones, they prefer plain minimal design in the physical world.
- LtWorf 3mo agoIt's not about what people want, it's about what designers all sheepishly follow.
- dnemmers 3mo agoI'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.
- HPsquared 3mo agoCan also be a side effect of cars being so expensive, people want to minimise depreciation so choose conservative colours.
- sib 3mo agoPodcast: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/car-colors/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/car-colors/
- rsynnott 3mo agoThe cars are primarily an efficiency thing; it's more efficient to just make a few colours. The requirement for those colours to be boring _may_ be coming to an end, though; see the Renault 5. It only comes in five colours, but two of those are yellow and green. Anecdotally, pretty much every Renault 5 I see around is yellow or green, so apparently people like it.
- feverzsj 3mo agoThat's the universal symbol of enshittification.
- frays 3mo 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.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- drstewart 3mo agoWhy'd Bill Gates name his company after his thing?
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- jijji 3mo ago[flagged]
- zapkyeskrill 3mo agoIt's good that it (they?) identified the smoking gun, and a fact that changed everything
- stared 3mo agoI am almost certain it is star or spark. But again, if someone is looking for assholes, they will find them.
- inigyou 3mo agoReminds 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.
- dingdingdang 3mo 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.
- minikomi 3mo agoDoes the openai logo look like that because .. OpenAI? Then others followed suit?
- ReptileMan 3mo agoBecause they are ran by assholes?
- mianos 3mo agoSame, I often wondered why the openai logo looks like an interpretation of goatse.
- penteract 3mo agoThis 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 https://openai.com/brand/#:~:text=right%20angles
- shakna 3mo ago> Our primary wordmark requires prescribed clear space and should NOT be used with the Blossom. Ironic missing space right there...
- Leonard_of_Q 3mo agoA 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."
- adonovan 3mo agoThis 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.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- adam_patarino 3mo agoWhen we started work on our logo for Rig I literally told our design agency we cant do butt holes
- jdw64 3mo agoI 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-ux https://www.makonea.com/en-US/casual/programmers-sell-ox-not...
- SkyMarshal 3mo agoClaude 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.
- mirekrusin 3mo agoOpenAI is more... open. Maybe that's what they wanted to communicate.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- lo_zamoyski 3mo agoA good question to pose to Sam.
- isodev 3mo agoOr 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.
- gumby 3mo agoThey should have chosen the domain goatse.ai
- chungusamongus 3mo agoButtholes occur in nature all the time
- redanddead 3mo agoEvolutionary it’s one of the first things to develop, see coleopteres Millions of species are just tubes
- BatteryMountain 3mo agoWhat 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
- andrewstuart 3mo agoIf I start an ai company I guarantee I will get a butthole logo and it will be animated.
- pharrington 3mo agoThis blogger's gonna go nuts when they learn about the ouroboros.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- dudul 3mo agoThe logo for the Brazilian Institute of Oriental Studies is a masterpiece :-)
- MeteorMarc 3mo agoMy son remarked: because they produce shit.
- genepope 3mo agoA butthole and a drain hole. Sounds like they are spot on. Give it to society in the butt and drain all societie's resources
- sparsesignal 3mo agoHave you tried clicking the Claude logo? https://x.com/ertug/status/2072339797708849398 https://x.com/ertug/status/2072339797708849398
- dmd 3mo agoThis seems to no longer work, or at least, I clicked over 100 times and didn't get anything.
- sparsesignal 3mo agoIt's still working for me, but only on the web (desktop) interface.
- lilbigdoot 3mo agoThat actually made me cackle ty
- amarant 3mo agoWow the animation makes it really look like an asshole!
- magneticnorth 3mo agohttps://xcancel.com/ertug/status/2072339797708849398 https://xcancel.com/ertug/status/2072339797708849398 to see it if you aren't logged in to x
- lemagedurage 3mo agoSometimes it feels like we're living in an episode of Silicon Valley, the show.
- elif 3mo agoI'm gonna choose to believe they all involved AI in the design process and AI has a cheeky fetish for humiliating humans.
- estetlinus 3mo agoIt the synthetic IQ goatse
- mugivarra69 3mo ago[dead]
- yen223 3mo agoIt's because OpenAI starts with an O, and an O looks like a butthole?
- j3th9n 3mo agoBecause life in the womb starts at the butthole.
- ks2048 3mo agoWalmart Logo
- throw83939r0r 3mo agoMaybe 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!
- seydor 3mo agoMore 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
- imhoguy 3mo agoYeah, after recent Samsung One UI and Google icons change...hm.
- whycome 3mo agoThe flag of India gives me that vibe.
- saltdoo 3mo agoSomething about Claude logo looking like Kurt Vonnegut's drawing in Breakfast of Champions always made me hesitant to use Claude.
- dingdingdang 3mo agoTalking 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.
- lo_zamoyski 3mo agoInteresting Rorschach test.
- HPsquared 3mo agoTheir product is a result of digestion.
- guesswho_ 3mo ago[dead]
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- nelox 3mo agoOnce seen, it cannot be unseen. Thanks.
- code_duck 3mo agoThe 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 https://logodix.com/logo/1065826.jpg
- wartywhoa23 3mo agoS-net. This thread got hairy real quick.
- paulnpace 3mo agoAre people who use lots of AIs butthole surfers?
- lucasfcosta 3mo agoFantastic article. It started like a joke but then added some pretty interesting notes (still using a funny tone).
- thinkthatover 3mo agoimo: sub-conscious messaging to get you used to looking at a loading screen for a large portion of your workday
- ozgung 3mo agoBefore 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.
- Arun2009 3mo agoJung 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 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.
- classified 3mo agoDid they make you sign an NDa for your spelling of mandala?
- Arun2009 3mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITRANS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITRANS
- classified 3mo agoTIL! The "NDa" is one of the "Prenasalized consonants".
- driverdan 3mo agoThanks for sharing, I'm not sure how I've never heard of this before.
- wartywhoa23 3mo agoIt's just that the center is Non-Disclosable.
- hmstx 3mo 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.
- emanueleielo 3mo ago[flagged]
- lofaszvanitt 3mo agoSomeone watching too much porn :D.
- dvh 3mo agoCircle 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.
- hdgvhicv 3mo agoHexagons are a far better shape.
- voxleone 3mo agoCircles are aristocracy in Flatland[0]. In advertising[1], they reign no less supreme. [0] https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/45506 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/45506 [1] https://inkbotdesign.com/circle-logos/ https://inkbotdesign.com/circle-logos/
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- felooboolooomba 3mo agoI 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.
- pikuseru 3mo agoIf your butthole looks like Copilot I recommend you have a trip to the doctors for a check up
- ionwake 3mo agoIll be honest I wasnt expecting this to be on point
- wartywhoa23 3mo agoThis 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.
- someguynamedq 3mo agoDo you know what the ouroboros represents?
- wartywhoa23 3mo agoThe 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.
- rayiner 3mo agoWe won’t have real AGIs until they can see this kind of pattern in logos.
- hnburnsy 3mo agoOpenai's logo has always bugged me because it looks like three interlocking chain links that the designer did not align properly.
- antaviana 3mo agoAt least Grok has the courage to recognize it is a black hole.
- fittingopposite 3mo agoThat was a good and funny read
- br0ceph 3mo agoIs it me, or AI company CEOs' faces, also look like buttholes?
- ChrisArchitect 3mo ago(2025) Some discussion then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43649640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43649640
- drgo 3mo agoLogos reflect the ambient cultural trends. This is the Butthole Age
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- srcoder 3mo ago"Shit in, shit out!" Everything makes sense now
- wseqyrku 3mo agoI think it reflects the centralized nature of their services. They can't think out of buttholes.
- opengrass 3mo agoBecause it's the fascination of Sam Altman, they want to be like him.
- arnab777 3mo agonow i cannot unread it .
- stwn 3mo agohungry man thinks of bread