Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min<\/p>\n
Meta released its new personal AI agent on Tuesday and named it Muse (like this bot is going to inspire humanity to write the next great tragedy and not relegate us to become the lead characters in one).<\/p>\n
Of course, Muse could refer to the act of thinking about something very carefully, but that would be even more ironic, given that some experts<\/a> in the field have sounded alarm bells<\/a> that AI is advancing faster than humanity is prepared for.<\/p>\n Admittedly, I didn\u2019t hear about the launch until two days after its release (I\u2019m not a tech reporter and still keep a paper calendar), but I was surprised by how it did come to my attention. <\/p>\n In a post on Threads<\/a>, user @rpennone pointed out how similar Muse\u2019s stroke-like \u201cM\u201d logo is to the logo of one our city\u2019s most beloved institutions, Mural Arts Philadelphia<\/a>. <\/p>\n I pulled up the two logos on my computer, put them side-by-side, and it painted a pretty clear picture. <\/p>\n Part of our DNA<\/p>\n Typically an \u201cM\u201d is two sets of arches, sometimes with a little rat tail on the upper left side for flair. But both of these Ms have three peaks and valleys with little rat-tail flairs at both ends. Granted, Muse\u2019s logo is blue, while Mural Arts\u2019 is typically purple (though like Gritty<\/a>\u2019s belly button, it can change colors), and the former\u2019s logo also has more fluid lines, while the latter\u2019s are more rigid. Still, the resemblance is enough to make you go \u201chmm…\u201d <\/p>\n Given how much people are worried about AI copying everything we create, this isn\u2019t going to help the situation. Maybe nobody outside of Philly would catch it, but Mural Arts is a part of the very fabric of this city, part of its DNA, and someone here was bound to notice the similarity and defend its honor. Nobody paints our baby into a corner. <\/p>\n For its part, Mural Arts was very diplomatic about the matter. Spokesperson Frank Luzi told me there\u2019s no concern on the nonprofit\u2019s part about copyright infringement and there are no plans for legal action.<\/p>\n \u201cThey feel like they are two very different organizations,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u2018Definitely a resemblance\u2019<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the interesting thing, Muse\u2019s logo was designed by a human who \u201ccut my creative teeth in Philadelphia,\u201d according to her website<\/a>.<\/p>\n Jessica Hische is a lettering artist and author specializing in \u201ctypographical work for logos, film, books, and other commercial applications,\u201d whose previous clients include companies like Target and Hallmark and people like Barack Obama and Wes Anderson. Based in Oakland, Calif., she graduated from Temple University<\/a>\u2019s Tyler School of Art and Architecture in 2006<\/a> with a bachelor\u2019s degree in design and illustration.<\/p>\n I reached out to ask her about the similarities in the logos. In an e-mailed statement, she said Meta contacted her after doing its own sketch of an M inspired by a pen stroke or scribble. She said she refined the design by \u201cplaying with the stroke angles, end treatments, and vertical rhythm.\u201d <\/p>\n Hische sent me a screenshot of the \u201cM\u201d Meta provided her and 30-plus variations she worked on until she landed on the final version. <\/p>\n I had to squint pretty hard to detect the differences, but lettering isn\u2019t my field of expertise. Meta\u2019s initial version does look more rigid and even more like Mural Arts\u2019 logo, while Hische\u2019s is more fluid. <\/p>\n Hische said she was familiar with the Mural Arts program from her time in Philly but hadn\u2019t seen its logo, which was created by J2<\/a>, a Philly-based branding company, and debuted in 2016<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s definitely a resemblance (and it would have been even closer had we landed on the brushier versions of the \u201cM\u201d I had explored!) but ultimately what Meta hired me to do was to make the mark they had created less rigid and more fluid,” Hische wrote. \u201cThe rigidity, regularity, and perfect symmetry are defining qualities of the Mural Arts M (along with the brush stroke treatment), and it\u2019s a great logo.\u201d<\/p>\n Common threads<\/p>\n I appreciated Hische\u2019s response and recognition of the resemblance. It\u2019s not the first time logos have looked similar (Korean Air\u2019s logo<\/a> looks more like the Pepsi logo than the Pepsi logo does). It\u2019s unclear where or how Meta came up with the original \u201cM\u201d logo Hische was asked to fine-tune. Meta did not return my requests for comment.<\/p>\n Later in the day, I saw Hische was catching flak online from people in her field for a completely different reason. <\/p>\n Because the digital world is a creepy stalker, as I was scrolling on Threads that evening, my feed suddenly become flooded with posts about Hische from people I don\u2019t follow. Users on Threads \u2014 which is owned by Meta \u2014 were both condemning her<\/a> for working on Meta\u2019s AI project and defending her<\/a> for working on it. Hische also penned her own nine-part Thread<\/a> explaining her rationale, which includes the line \u201cI have literally been touching grass more because of AI\u201d and ends with a pitch for her latest children\u2019s book.<\/p>\n I couldn\u2019t help but wonder if this is right where Threads wanted me to end up. Why did that initial post about the logos from someone I didn\u2019t follow pop up in my feed? Why did it also end up in the feed of an editor who sent it my way, confirming for me I should write this piece?<\/p>\n I thought I was pulling a thread, but maybe Threads was pulling me all along.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min Meta released its new personal AI agent on Tuesday and named it Muse…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284357,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[118585,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-284356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-muse-meta-logo-mural-arts-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}