How sparkles became an AI signSourced
✨ began on Japanese phones.
Now it marks AI buttons.
The sparkles emoji appeared on Japanese mobile phones in the late 1990s and entered Unicode in 2010. By the mid-2020s, software companies were using it to label AI features, although it had not been designed specifically for AI.
A decorative symbol
became a technology sign.
Summary / translation: Unbubly · CC BY-SA 4.0
Source and reuse details
Sparkles emoji · Wikimedia contributors
Adapted, summarized and translated from the source. Adapted text is also available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Reviewed: 2026-10-01