Emojis from AI: How Apple's Genmojis are used in the operating system
With iOS 18 and co. it should be possible to create your own emoji creations. Apple is planning to embed them surprisingly deeply in its operating systems.
Genmoji creation on an iPhone.
(Image: Apple)
As we all know, you can never have enough emojis: The Unicode Consortium regularly adds new characters to the collection, which Apple and other operating system developers then integrate. Recently, the trend has also been towards AI-generated emojis: various web services allow them to be created. Now Apple also wants to join in: With iOS 18, macOS 15 and co. there is to be a dedicated AI image generator just for emojis. It is now known how deeply this will be integrated into the respective operating systems.
If nothing works, RTF works
As with its other AI tools, which will be released gradually from the fall as part of Apple Intelligence, it will not be possible to generate photorealistic graphics. Instead, Genmojis rely on a combination of existing emojis with new components. Integration into any app is possible, as Apple announced during a developer session at WWDC last week. The NSAdaptiveImageGlyph API is being introduced for this purpose.
Genmojis should work on all Apple platforms as long as they have the latest operating system. On older versions, however, an image description will be displayed. In addition to being inserted directly into texts, Genmojis can also be used as stickers and Memojis in the Messages app (and elsewhere). According to Apple, Genmojis are based on the respective text height and text format. The AI emojis can also be copied into rich text documents (RTFs) and shared.
You can't try them out yet
Despite their announcement last week, Genmojis cannot yet be tested. Although Apple has published an iOS 18 beta (and those of other operating systems) for developers, it has not yet activated its AI features. This is to take place in the coming weeks, possibly initially only after completing a waiting list. The reason for this is that Apple itself is said to be in the process of building up sufficient capacity.
Apple describes Genmojis as a way for users to express themselves better. "By simply entering a description, their Genmoji will appear along with additional options. Users can also create Genmojis of friends and family members based on their photos. Just like emoji, Genmoji can be inserted into messages or shared as a sticker or reaction in a Tapback," the company writes.
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