Why do AI company logos look like buttholes? (2025)

(velvetshark.com)

439 points | by miniBill 2 days ago ago

146 comments

  • adonovan 2 days ago 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.

  • SkyMarshal 2 days ago 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.

    • mirekrusin 2 days ago ago

      OpenAI is more... open. Maybe that's what they wanted to communicate.

      • gumby a day ago ago

        They should have chosen the domain goatse.ai

      • lo_zamoyski 2 days ago ago

        A good question to pose to Sam.

        • isodev a day ago 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.

    • redanddead a day ago ago

      Claude is the worst offender

      GPT is kinda Celtic

      None of the Chinese labs have this buttholeness

      • dd8601fn a day ago 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.

    • rglover a day ago ago

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

      One man's trash...

    • ludicrousdispla 17 hours ago ago

      As was often said in my Sculpture program (and more often for other parts of human anatomy) ... 'recurring forms in nature'

    • yreg 2 days ago 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.

      • rikima_ 12 hours ago ago

        i remember it's similar to one of the symbols in Vonnegut's books so not entirely original

    • Kiro a day ago ago

      Yes, a lot of commenters here (and the author) outing themselves.

    • anal_reactor a day ago 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.

      • mondobe a day ago ago

        I'll trust you on this subject, anal_reactor

      • mike_hearn 12 hours ago ago

        It's not millennialism, it's driven by Apple and Google constantly changing the rules around what app icons need to look like. The logos are all just adaptations to app store rules.

        1. They have to be square. That immediately eliminates basically all logos that are just the companies name and forces everyone to adopt some sort of symbol.

        2. They have to have solid backgrounds and rounded corners.

        3. They are supposed to match Apple's theme, whatever it is this year. In practice this means simple solid geometries and not anything too fancy or detailed.

        4. They have to be recognizable at a wide range of sizes, including very small.

        5. If you want your logo to appear in a notification bar then the rules get even harsher. A tiny square, no detail, and it has to make sense in black and white. Note that the ChatGPT app puts such an icon into the macOS menu bar, so a logo that didn't work in black and white and at tiny sizes would be a problem for them.

        When you combine these constraints what you're left with is variants shapes that fill the area inside a square, but which are not themselves square as iOS icons are actually "squircles", which can work in colour or black and white, and which can be recognizable at small sizes. So that's what you get.

        The only way out of this boring-ass Sahara Desert of visuals would be for Apple and Google to redesign their operating systems in such a way that icons no longer mattered as much, or could be non-square shaped.

    • chungusamongus 2 days ago ago

      Buttholes occur in nature all the time

      • subscribed a day ago ago

        If I not misheard (I don't know, just remember it), even the fetus development basically starts from the butthole.

        • tremon a day ago 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...

          • tremon an hour ago ago

            > (around day 9)

            Typo; should be day 17/18.

        • throwaway173738 a day ago ago

          I read somewhere that the first invertebrate animal ate and excreted through the same butthole-shaped oriface.

          • rsa4046 a day ago 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).

          • woadwarrior01 a day ago ago

            Yeah, I learnt about this from the amazing Max Bennett book: A brief history of intelligence.

        • chungusamongus a day ago ago

          That's beautiful

      • warumdarum a day ago ago

        I wouldn't give much on the opinion of a topological donut. I should know, I'm one

      • redanddead a day ago ago

        Evolutionary it’s one of the first things to develop, see coleopteres

        Millions of species are just tubes

        • wartywhoa23 a day ago ago

          Further generalized as tori in terms of topology, and humans are no exception.

    • sapphirelimetea a day ago 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)

      • jambalaya8 a day ago 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. :(

      • redanddead a day ago ago

        Bite is always the answer

    • srcoder a day ago ago

      One is still fresh, the other ones trashed

    • elictronic 2 days ago ago

      I didn’t realize Claude owned half of the companies.

    • throx21pizza a day ago 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!!

  • VladVladikoff 2 days ago 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?

    • yorwba 2 days ago 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!

      • bob778 2 days ago 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

        • tokai a day ago ago

          Why not, he's a thieving idiot.

    • lpapez 2 days ago ago

      You are absolutely right! It was an honest mistake on my part. The absence of colour is the smoking gun.

    • Sankozi 2 days ago 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.

    • bbx 2 days ago ago

      You're right, there's no gradient.

    • airstrike 2 days ago ago

      Ironically, yes.

  • designerarvid 2 days ago ago

    They’re apertures; symbolically things emerge from them.

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

    • eranation 2 days ago ago

      Aperture Science

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

      • Sharlin 2 days ago ago

        This explains so much.

      • inigyou 2 days ago ago

        We doodoo what we must.

    • estearum 2 days ago 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.

      • robotbikes 2 days ago 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.

    • derektank 2 days ago ago

      Claude’s logo is closer to a dandelion than an aperture (though closer to a butthole than either)

  • sparsesignal 2 days ago ago

    Have you tried clicking the Claude logo? https://x.com/ertug/status/2072339797708849398

    • amarant a day ago ago

      Wow the animation makes it really look like an asshole!

    • lilbigdoot a day ago ago

      That actually made me cackle ty

    • magneticnorth a day ago ago

      https://xcancel.com/ertug/status/2072339797708849398

      to see it if you aren't logged in to x

    • dmd 2 days ago ago

      This seems to no longer work, or at least, I clicked over 100 times and didn't get anything.

      • sparsesignal 2 days ago ago

        It's still working for me, but only on the web (desktop) interface.

    • lemagedurage a day ago ago

      Sometimes it feels like we're living in an episode of Silicon Valley, the show.

  • penteract 2 days ago 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

    • shakna 2 days ago ago

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

      Ironic missing space right there...

  • saltdoo 2 days ago ago

    Something about Claude logo looking like Kurt Vonnegut's drawing in Breakfast of Champions always made me hesitant to use Claude.

  • seydor 2 days ago 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

    • imhoguy 2 days ago ago

      Yeah, after recent Samsung One UI and Google icons change...hm.

  • stared 2 days ago 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....

  • hmstx a day ago 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.

  • ozgung 2 days ago 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.

  • elif 2 days ago ago

    I'm gonna choose to believe they all involved AI in the design process and AI has a cheeky fetish for humiliating humans.

  • mtct88 2 days ago ago

    Never thought about it.

    But now I can't unsee it.

  • elthor89 2 days ago ago

    Thank you. I once asked Claude the same. It reminded me of the flag from the tv show community

    • LtWorf a day ago ago

      E pluribus anum

      • wartywhoa23 a day ago ago

        Fits great for companies whose business is devouring everything in sight, digesting it, and selling the end result to end users.

  • hnburnsy a day ago ago

    Openai's logo has always bugged me because it looks like three interlocking chain links that the designer did not align properly.

  • code_duck 2 days ago 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

    • wartywhoa23 a day ago ago

      S-net. This thread got hairy real quick.

  • Arun2009 2 days ago 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.

  • stared 2 days ago ago

    I am almost certain it is star or spark.

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

    • inigyou 2 days ago 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.

      • dingdingdang a day ago 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.

  • felooboolooomba a day ago 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.

  • vb-8448 2 days ago 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.

    • rsynnott 16 hours ago ago

      The 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.

    • dnemmers 2 days ago 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.

      • HPsquared a day ago ago

        Can also be a side effect of cars being so expensive, people want to minimise depreciation so choose conservative colours.

    • sib a day ago ago
    • HPsquared 2 days ago ago

      I think because people are visually overstimulated from all the content in their phones, they prefer plain minimal design in the physical world.

      • LtWorf a day ago ago

        It's not about what people want, it's about what designers all sheepishly follow.

  • genepope 2 days ago 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

  • Leonard_of_Q 2 days ago 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."

  • frays 2 days ago 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.

  • nelox 2 days ago ago

    Once seen, it cannot be unseen. Thanks.

  • whycome 2 days ago ago

    The flag of India gives me that vibe.

  • Mistletoe 2 days ago ago

    Form follows function but really it’s just probably modeled on the founders.

    Kudos to DeepSeek and Midjourney for doing something different.

    • Avicebron 2 days ago ago

      DeepSeek has the best logo.

  • adam_patarino 2 days ago ago

    When we started work on our logo for Rig I literally told our design agency we cant do butt holes

  • antaviana a day ago ago

    At least Grok has the courage to recognize it is a black hole.

  • dvh a day ago 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.

  • wseqyrku a day ago ago

    I think it reflects the centralized nature of their services. They can't think out of buttholes.

  • ReptileMan 2 days ago ago

    Because they are ran by assholes?

  • opengrass a day ago ago

    Because it's the fascination of Sam Altman, they want to be like him.

  • lucasfcosta 2 days ago ago

    Fantastic article. It started like a joke but then added some pretty interesting notes (still using a funny tone).

  • HPsquared 2 days ago ago

    Their product is a result of digestion.

  • pikuseru a day ago ago

    If your butthole looks like Copilot I recommend you have a trip to the doctors for a check up

  • zapkyeskrill 2 days ago ago

    It's good that it (they?) identified the smoking gun, and a fact that changed everything

  • drgo a day ago ago

    Logos reflect the ambient cultural trends. This is the Butthole Age

  • minikomi 2 days ago ago

    Does the openai logo look like that because .. OpenAI? Then others followed suit?

  • br0ceph a day ago ago

    Is it me, or AI company CEOs' faces, also look like buttholes?

  • rayiner a day ago ago

    We won’t have real AGIs until they can see this kind of pattern in logos.

  • mianos 2 days ago ago

    Same, I often wondered why the openai logo looks like an interpretation of goatse.

  • yen223 2 days ago ago

    It's because OpenAI starts with an O, and an O looks like a butthole?

  • ionwake a day ago ago

    Ill be honest I wasnt expecting this to be on point

  • thinkthatover 2 days ago ago

    imo: sub-conscious messaging to get you used to looking at a loading screen for a large portion of your workday

  • feverzsj 2 days ago ago

    That's the universal symbol of enshittification.

  • stwn 14 hours ago ago

    hungry man thinks of bread

  • fittingopposite a day ago ago

    That was a good and funny read

  • MeteorMarc 2 days ago ago

    My son remarked: because they produce shit.

  • wartywhoa23 a day ago 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.

    • someguynamedq a day ago ago

      Do you know what the ouroboros represents?

      • wartywhoa23 a day ago 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.

  • dingdingdang 2 days ago 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.

  • tda 2 days ago ago

    What is seen, cannot be unseen

  • dudul 2 days ago ago

    The logo for the Brazilian Institute of Oriental Studies is a masterpiece :-)

  • pharrington 2 days ago ago

    This blogger's gonna go nuts when they learn about the ouroboros.

  • farfatched 2 days ago ago

    AI plop.

  • estetlinus 2 days ago ago

    It the synthetic IQ goatse

  • BatteryMountain 2 days ago 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

  • ChrisArchitect a day ago ago
  • ks2048 2 days ago ago

    Walmart Logo

  • Alien1Being 2 days ago ago

    Perhaps to symbolise the quality of the material they extrude...

    Slop rhymes with plop.

  • lofaszvanitt a day ago ago

    Someone watching too much porn :D.

  • paulnpace 2 days ago ago

    Are people who use lots of AIs butthole surfers?

  • lo_zamoyski 2 days ago ago

    Interesting Rorschach test.

  • j3th9n 2 days ago ago

    Because life in the womb starts at the butthole.

  • _jsdp 2 days ago ago

    Reminded me of Gavin Belson Signature from Silicon Valley :-D

    • keyle 2 days ago ago

      A brilliantly designed horizontal logo to fit on server racks!

    • levzettelin 2 days ago ago

      "I like it! It's bold!" lolol

  • andrewstuart 2 days ago ago

    If I start an ai company I guarantee I will get a butthole logo and it will be animated.

  • jdw64 2 days ago 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...

  • drstewart 2 days ago ago

    Why'd Bill Gates name his company after his thing?

  • srcoder a day ago ago

    "Shit in, shit out!" Everything makes sense now

  • arnab777 15 hours ago ago

    now i cannot unread it .

  • throw83939r0r 2 days ago 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!