AI loves the sparkle emoji ✨

Hi there, it’s Rachel in San Francisco. Have you noticed artificial intelligence is looking a lot more sparkly lately? But first…Three thing [View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( Hi there, it’s Rachel in San Francisco. Have you noticed artificial intelligence is looking a lot more sparkly lately? But first… Three things you need to know today: • The US accused Russia of using AI bots to spin pro-Kremlin narratives [on social media]( • Meta will start removing more posts [that attack “Zionists”]( • Apple led gains as the PC industry saw [3% growth in the second quarter]( Do you believe in magic? Over the past year, versions of the [sparkles emoji]( have popped up all over the AI landscape, particularly when it comes to marketing AI products to consumers. Alphabet Inc.’s Google uses a blue version of it to denote content produced by its Gemini chatbot. OpenAI uses slightly different sparkles to differentiate between the AI models that power ChatGPT. Microsoft Corp.’s LinkedIn has its own variety of sparkle adorning suggested questions to ask a chatbot on the social network. And Adobe Inc.’s [take on the icon]( beckons users to generate AI images with its Firefly software. It makes sense that companies would want to make it clear, in many cases, when a service is using generative AI. The technology is still new to many of us, not everyone wants to use it, it may not always do what you expect, and it can make mistakes. In the past, we’ve unthinkingly accepted the icons associated with different software features and technologies. Think a paper clip for attaching an image to an email or a cloud for cloud computing. But [opinions]( are [divided]( about whether the sparkles emoji is the right one for this tectonic technological shift. In some cases, these sparkles are, well, sparking anger. “I straight up REFUSE to let AI take the sparkle emoji from me,” one person recently posted on X. Other [commentators](, [YouTubers]( and [outlets]( have also noticed and sometimes protested the trend. The icons strike Luke Stark, an assistant professor at Western University in Ontario, Canada, who studies the impacts of AI and other technologies, as a way for companies to bring up magical imagery, which “ties these products to the unreality and wonder produced by science fiction stories.” References to magic are [nothing new]( in technology marketing. Apple Inc., for instance, has been talking about its “magical” products for years, including, most recently, its new AI platform, Apple Intelligence. (On the hardware side, the company also currently sells a $99 keyboard that is literally called [Magic Keyboard](). But for Stark, the imagery distracts from the real-world issues facing the AI industry. For example, he notes the controversial uses of human labor and troves of creative content that are necessary for making the magic happen. Kristy Tillman, who has worked as a design director for major tech companies, also thinks the sparkles’ connotation of magic — which AI is not — isn’t a good thing. But she believes that regardless of the imagery, some people will still have “charged feelings” about it, since the emoji has become a proxy for peoples’ emotions about the spread of AI itself. AI sparkles have infiltrated corporate America, appearing in services like [Zoom](, [Spotify]( and the [Washington Post](. “People just have lots of opinions, rightfully so, about a technology they didn’t really ask for,” Tillman said. But while she thinks there’s probably a better way to communicate that a product uses AI, Tillman said companies’ takes on the sparkles emoji are helpful because they’re creating a de facto standard that everyone can recognize and understand. This is much better than if different companies came up with their own symbols for AI, she said, and speaks to the challenges designers face when deploying software for millions of people across cultures, devices, and languages. “I bet the first person who used it had no idea they were setting a standard,” she said. —[Rachel Metz](mailto:rmetz17@bloomberg.net) The big story David Ellison’s agreement to acquire Paramount owes much to [Redbird and its lead dealmaker](, Gerry Cardinale. Cardinale, a former Goldman Sachs banker, helped lead talks among Ellison’s Skydance Media, Paramount’s board and its controlling shareholder, the Redstone family, resulting in Sunday’s merger announcement. RedBird will be the second largest investor in the new Paramount after Ellison and his father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. One to watch [Watch George Sivulka, chief executive officer of AI startup Hebbia, interviewed on Bloomberg Television about his company and its latest fundraising round.]( Get fully charged France is letting airborne taxis fly at [the Olympic Games](. Dyson will cut almost a third of its workforce [in a restructuring](. A group of African technology hubs will get a $1 billion [UN-backed investment](. Captions, a startup that uses artificial intelligence to let people create and edit videos, has raised a new funding round from a star-studded list of investors, including actor Jared Leto, [vaulting its valuation to $500 million](. 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