Kevin Walker on Why AI Companies Are Building Mascots Like Muse, Dots and Claw'd

Kevin Walker, the chief creative officer at Buck, posits that the emergence of AI mascots stems from a fundamental human tendency to attribute human-like qualities to technology. Notable examples include Muse from Meta, Dots from OpenAI, Claw'd from Anthropic, and Notion's own face—all sophisticated systems that can search and perform tasks on our behalf. Walker draws parallels to his puppet theatre experiences from the 1980s and references the paper "On Seeing Human" by Nicholas Epley, Adam Waytz, and John Cacioppo, which discusses anthropomorphism through the concepts of sociality, effectance, and elicited knowledge. Buck collaborated with Notion to animate a character designed by Roman Muradov, examining its interactions. He cautions that while a face can clarify complexity, it may also distort a system's true capabilities, highlighting the art involved in mascot creation.