Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter owner Elon Musk blew hot and cold on AI. He was an early investor in OpenAI, maker of DALL-E 2 and Chat GPT, but later pulled out. More recently, he was saying that AI was dangerous. Now he’s started his own artificial intelligence company, xAI, to save us.
The new company already has a logo, and there’s quite a bit of debate about it. While some admire the simplicity with which it portrays the xAI name in just three strokes in a row, others think it’s shoddy work and as hard to read as Musk’s stance on AI technology. (see our choice of best AI art generators to explore current AI tools for image creation).
Musk’s xAI logo
At first glance, Musk’s new logo can be easily misinterpreted if you don’t already know the company name, resembling both X1 and xAI. The logo has its fans, who have praised the effective use of lines to write the company name. Some even see it as the third in a trilogy of classic Musk “logos that tell a story,” up there with the SpaceX logo and the Tesla logo, which is absolutely not an IUD.
The X may lightly refer to the SpaceX logo, but even among fans there is debate about how the xAI logo should be read. Some believe that the vertical line (the “I”) forms one of the lines of the “A”, while others believe that the “A” is formed in the lower part of the “X”. Meanwhile, some believe the logo looks suspiciously similar to that of cryptocurrency protocol Algorand.
The xAI logo has its three letters in the correct casing with only 3 strokes Since r/DesignPorn
Each logo has a unique story 🎨 pic.twitter.com/ENew1LKsLVJuly 13, 2023
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Interesting how the brain perceives things differently. Take the @xai logo. Image 1 is how I see xAI in the logo Image 2 is how @cb_doge sees xAI in the logo. Which do you see? 1, 2 or something else? https://t.co/umIfEQ5078 pic.twitter.com/KhfjmL6y64July 14, 2023
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Did you notice @xai has a similar logo to @Algorand? I like it. Both are clean and simple. 🙂 pic.twitter.com/sVc4G3HYHzJuly 14, 2023
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Others have noticed what they think is an “error” in the new logo design that needs to be fixed. If you look closely you will see that this ‘I’ is not straight but tapers outward as it rises. It irritates some people.
#xAI Logo observation Guess the I of Intelligence is growing… right?#ElonMusk @xai @elonmusk pic.twitter.com/o0iY5DEvWpJuly 13, 2023
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When I saw the new xAI logo for Elon Musk’s AI company, I felt something was wrong, and I was right, I fixed it.July 13, 2023
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I don’t believe in logo design rules per se, although we have some in our guide for how to design a logo. I suspect the tapering is intentional in order to create more separation between the base of the ‘I’ and the diagonal line of the ‘X’ (some people read more metaphorically, suggesting it’s to communicate only with xAI the ‘intelligence’ part of “artificial intelligence” will grow, but that sounds like a generous interpretation).
Announcement of @xAI training to understand realityJuly 12, 2023
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It is not yet known exactly what xAI will do. In his tweet announcing the company’s launch, Musk simply said that the company’s goal will be to “understand reality.” Quite a mission statement. He also claimed that the company, which appears to refer to the name of his own son, X Æ A-12 Musk, will be “pro-humanity”.
This is reassuring considering all these anti-humanity enterprises. But the logo seems a little cold and hard to read for such a “pro-human” approach. A “crisp, empty void with no real symbolism” was one of the most overwhelming verdicts on Reddit.
Discover our selection of best AI art tutorials and our basic guide to how to use DALL-E 2 to learn more about how text-to-image AI models work.
