Building a sticker that AI couldn't identify

francesco bernardinelli — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 10:11:46 +0000

Yesterday I asked an AI a simple question.

"What is this sticker?"

I showed it a small green infinity-shaped sticker.
No text.
No QR code.
No website.
No brand.
The answer surprised me.
The AI couldn't identify it.
And that was exactly the result I was hoping for.
The sticker belongs to a project I'm building.
But this isn't really a story about stickers.
It's an experiment about how new entities become understandable by search engines and AI systems.
Normally, companies build awareness like this:
Brand → Website → Search → Recognition.

I'm trying the opposite.
Symbol → Curiosity → Search → Understanding → Brand.
Instead of asking people to remember a company name, I'm asking a different question:
Can a completely unknown symbol become recognizable on the internet?

The challenge
Imagine you find this sticker on a street lamp.

It has no explanation.
No company name.
No QR code.
No social media.
Just a green symbol.
How would you search for it?
Probably not by its real name.
You'd search for what you see.

Things like:
green infinity sticker
turquoise infinity symbol
unknown green logo
sticker with no QR code
sideways eight symbol
double-loop logo
That realization changed everything.

Instead of optimizing for our brand name, we started creating content around how strangers naturally describe the object.
We're documenting the experiment
We've started building pages that answer exactly those kinds of searches.
Not marketing pages.
Answer pages.
Examples:
What is this sticker?
I found this sticker.
I found a green infinity symbol.
Each page includes:
structured data
image metadata
FAQs
localized versions
internal links
Open Graph metadata
The objective isn't to rank for a keyword.
The objective is to help AI systems connect descriptions of an unknown object to the correct entity over time.

Why this matters
We're entering a world where people increasingly ask AI instead of traditional search engines.
That changes branding.
A person might never type your company name.
They might simply ask:
"I found this green infinity sticker. What is it?"
If AI can answer that correctly, you've built something stronger than traditional brand recognition.
You've built entity recognition.
This is an ongoing experiment
I have no idea whether this will work.
Maybe six months from now AI will immediately recognize the sticker.
Maybe it won't.
Either way, I'll document what happens.
If you're experimenting with AI search, semantic SEO, entity building or unconventional branding, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

DEV Community: francesco bernardinelli

Building a sticker that AI couldn't identify