Every zeitgeist brings new design idioms. The hamburger menu (≡) proliferated with mobile due to screen constraints and remains prevalent. Before AI, the sparkle emoji had different connotations; now it signifies AI — sparkles, rainbow colors, and arguably unicorns.

Some patterns are AI-specific, like streaming text refined by chat interfaces. Others spread beyond AI, such as "shimmering text" indicating "thinking" now repurposed for any asynchronous task (fetching, computing).

AI apps often use tiny icons, clashing with system-level grain. Desktop Electron apps like Claude, Codex, and Cursor have smaller, thinner icons than native macOS apps (Finder, Photos, Mail). Other AI aesthetics include beige/cream colors, orange accents, serif typefaces, and "whack-a-mole" UI controls where non-determinism seeps into UI/UX.

This raises questions about which AI-born aesthetics will spread and become lasting software interaction paradigms.