Apple 'Genmoji' and Image Playground introduce gen AI emojis and mood pics

AI has become a huge deal in the mobile industry, and Apple doesn’t plan to fall behind. Apple Intelligence is all the hype at WWDC 2024, introducing features that aim to fulfill all your artificial intelligence needs straight from its operating systems. Two very fun features it hopes users might enjoy are Genmoji and Image Playground.

Genmoji allows you to create emojis using AI on the Messages app, straight from the keyboard. When you launch the feature, you’ll be able to provide a description of the Genmoji you would like Apple Intelligence to create. It will then load for a bit and create multiple options for you. And because Apple Intelligence knows who is in your photo gallery, you can pick someone, and it will make a Genmoji of that person for you. Pretty fun, right?

Now, onto Image Playground. This is pretty much like Apple’s competition against AI image generation tools like Dall-E or Mid Journey. From what we saw in the previews, the images seem much more cartoon-styled, though. It can create pictures, but takes on a different approach that may help you avoid prompts. You can choose from various concepts like themes, costumes, places, accessories, and more. Based on these selections, it will start generating previews of what the image can look like, offering multiple options. You can also use prompts if you want something more specific, of course. It will also suggest concepts and people for you, based on context.

Image Playground will have its own dedicated app, but will also be integrated into other Apple apps. Apple is also releasing an Image Playground API so that developers can incorporate this image-generating tool into their apps.

Both Genmoji and Image Playground will be rolled out as part of the company’s Apple Intelligence platform. Apple Intelligence features will be available for free on iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia, with the first wave of devices including the iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, and iPad and Mac with M1 and later this fall.

While these features are technically available on Android, Google’s operating system has yet to integrate them in such a seamless way. You may have to dig deeper or find workarounds to match these capabilities. For example, we have a guide on creating custom emojis on Android. And if you want to generate custom images, you will have to use something like Gemini, or one of the third-party image-generating services available as apps. None integrate as tightly with other apps, nor your image gallery, though. We suppose Google has some catching up to do here.