Ollie Hirst Visualizes Vapor Love and Glowing Grief for BBC Science Focus

Ollie Hirst illustrated the entire “7 Times AI Got It Spectacularly Wrong” feature for BBC Science Focus. He pitched the whole series around the idea of “infiltration” with a cyberpunk visual language pushing into ordinary life.

That visual grammar is what makes the wedding ring image, illustrating the section on AI romantic companions, hit so cleanly.

Two rings interlace. One a solid greyscale band, the other a glowing loop of red, purple, and electric blue, set with a faceted heart floating above it like a wireframe hologram.

AI companionship looks dazzling, but there’s nothing actually inside it. The black background pushes the neons to maximum saturation, and the soft grain Hirst uses around each glowing edge gives the rings a real sense of light bleed, like they’re lit from within rather than just colored in.

Hirst mentioned in his Instagram post that working against a greyscale counterpart threw off his usual color balance and took serious trial and error. You can feel that restraint paying off with the contrast it creates. The greyness is what makes the holographic colors feel almost too bright.

“7 Times AI Got It Spectacularly Wrong” was published in BBC Science Focus Magazine on March 26, 2026. Illustration by Ollie Hirst.