When it comes to AI, companies and creators seem fascinated by the colour blue…
No need to reinvent the teal
When picking out colour schemes, AI companies are surprisingly uninventive. More often than not, they tend to stick to the same narrow band of shades.
Take stock images. Searching for artificial intelligence on images brings back a screen of overwhelmingly blue designs.
Names too. The first chess AI, which notoriously beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997 was named Deep Blue. UC Berkley recently named their advanced industrial robot, you guessed it… Blue.
And AI companies tend to have a blue bias in the colour schemes they use. A common colour unites the logos of some of the top AI companies:
It certainly seems like the AI world skews blue. We put our detective caps to work out what it is about blue that’s so deeply bound up with our concept of AI.
Trust me, I’m an AI
One theory is that the colour blue instils emotions of trust and reassurance. According to colour psychology, blue is often perceived as a reliable and stable colour, one which is seen as non-threatening. This is a good feeling for a rapidly, at times frighteningly so, developing technology to package itself in. When your product is accused of threatening the very existence of humanity, harnessing the power of a secure and confidence-instilling colour seems like a pretty sound PR choice.
Get some headspace
Along similar lines, blue calls to mind feelings of calmness and serenity. It is often described as peaceful, tranquil and orderly colour, evoking oceans and skies and deep breaths. Breathe in, breathe out, let go of worry and rest assured the future is safe in the hands of our AI overlords.
Welcome to ‘The Future’
As well as being calming and trustworthy, blue is also the colour of opportunity. Blue-sky thinking, ideas with endless potential. Blue can seem like the colour of the future, forward-looking and open-minded.
When we asked AI Logo, it seemed to confirm what we were thinking:
It’s a man’s world
Or maybe the reason is simpler than this. Blue is described as a favourite colour by many people across countries and, while it is a top pick across genders, it is particularly strongly preferred by men. So perhaps the flood of blue AI just points to the male dominated nature of the tech world…
Which, if any, of these theories is correct? Honestly, we haven’t got a blue. Why so many companies and creators visualising AI are drawn to the colour blue is perhaps not that important. But what does seem crucial is that AI companies actually put into action many of these goals they may be aiming to show through their use of this colour. The risks of not doing so are significant. Without genuinely trustworthy, secure and forward-looking AI development processes, we’ll all be very blue indeed.
