Designer of Meta's AI Logo Faces Backlash From Fellow Artists

Bay Area lettering artist Jessica Hische took a freelance job designing the M logo for Meta's new AI assistant, Muse. She knew it might upset some people, but says the intensity of the reaction caught her off guard.

Why she accepted

Hische says her client work has been slow for the past year or two, and that work is what subsidizes her two brick-and-mortar shops in Oakland, which are not very profitable. By her account, the shops together made about $10,000 in profit last year. She says she pays four people, including herself and her mother, and has invested $100,000 in the Studioworks platform and $30,000 in Drawling, her art shop for kids.

The work itself

Meta's internal team had drawn the M as a single stroke of uniform width and wanted it to feel more inspiring and creative, and less rigid. Hische finished the work in two days, producing 32 versions, for a fee of roughly $12,500. The logotype took another two weeks. She stresses that she did not use generative AI, and that the discussions centered on making the logo feel part of the same world as Meta's infinity-loop mark.

The reaction

News of the project spread quickly on Threads, where dozens of designers accused her of selling out. Some users posted photos of her home and speculated about her finances. Hische says she felt devastated, but does not regret taking the job. She believes a company hiring an independent artist rather than using generative AI deserves credit.

She adds that fears about AI's effect on commercial art are real, and that the technology becomes a problem when it replaces people or does the heavy lifting in work that requires human creativity.