How the sparkles emoji became the symbol of our AI future
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. 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.
Symbols and icons play an integral role in the user experience on computers, acting as shortcuts for communication. Magnifying glasses represent search, for example, while a floppy disk icon still means “save," decades after the technology went extinct. The first known use of the sparkle on software dates back to 1990, when Adobe debuted the pixelated icon on Photoshop’s wand tool, according to Paul Hunt, typeface developer and font designer at the company.
An updated version emerged in one of the first emoji sets to see widespread use, released by Japanese mobile-phone company NTT in 1999. The sparkles emoji then spread to consumer devices like the iPhone and has remained one of the 10 most popular icons for nearly a decade, Broni said. The sparkles emoji surged in popularity starting in mid-2020 after people on TikTok and other social-media platforms began using it to bookend certain words for emphasis or sarcastic purposes, according to Emojipedia.
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