With iOS 18.2 and iPadOS 18.2, Apple introduced Genmoji, the feature that lets you create a custom emoji character if there's not already an emoji that exists for what you want to depict.
You can create Genmoji from the emoji keyboard in Messages, Notes, and more, and the characters work much like emoji. Genmoji, like Image Playground, have significant restrictions put in place to prevent people from creating objectionable images, and these guardrails can make it hard to make what you're looking for.
Genmoji are anything but open-ended, so I thought I'd highlight some of what you can and can't do with the custom emojis as of right now.
Humans in Poses and Generic Humans
With anything that's even vaguely humanoid, Genmoji almost always prompts you to choose a person to base the result on. You can choose yourself or a friend or family member that you have images of in Photo Library, or you can use a standard emoji character.
The requirement is aggressive and limiting because it doesn't take into account context, and it prevents the creation of generic human-adjacent items and characters.
Gingerbread man, for example, does not produce a gingerbread man. It prompts for a person and then outputs an irrelevant image that may or may not include some kind of holiday item. If you're wondering if "gingerbread cookie" produces the desired result, it sometimes will and it sometimes won't.
The requirement to add a character isn't too much of a surprise because it means Apple Intelligence cannot pick a skin tone, race, or gender on its own, so there's nothing to default to. But it does result in some restrictions on poses and getting an activity depicted that you prefer. A lot of times, Genmoji that use your image or a friend or family member default to a head and shoulders view, and it can be tricky to get a more full body pose.
This is a bigger problem with Image Playground than Genmoji, but it can still cause frustration.
Humanoid Creatures and Items
Genmoji does not like to generate humanoid creatures that aren't based on a person or an emoji. Trying to get the feature to create a simple garden gnome, for example, is a feat. I couldn't get Genmoji to make a garden gnome with any of the following phrases:
- Gnome
- Garden gnome
- Non-humanoid gnome
- Gnome statue
There are instances where you can get what you're looking for with workarounds like that, but Apple has Genmoji so locked down that it's a frustrating exercise.
After not being able to make a gnome, I tried a range of mythological creatures. There wasn't a lot of consistency between what I was able to generate and what didn't work.
Creatures Genmoji Generated
- Sasquatch
- Yeti
- Dragon
- Minotaur
- Unicorn
- Hydra
- Ogre
- Leprechaun
- Goblin
- Phoenix
- Hippogriff
- Hellhound
- Manticore (but not really)
- Sphinx
- Bunyip
- Elf
- Mermaid
- Wendigo
- Kraken (Sea monster works instead)
- Wyvern
- Basilisk
- Cockatrice
- Chupacabra
- Tanuki
- Jackalope
- Wolpertinger
- Wampus
- Chimera
- Ouroboros
- Golem
With creatures in this category, it prompted me to add a person. These worked with varying degrees of success. Centaur added horns, for example, but Orc basically just put the character in armor.
- Vampire
- Werewolf
- Centaur
- Orc
- Fairy
- Selkie (just generated a standard person)
- Anubis (just generated a standard person)
This category won't come as a surprise. Apple doesn't allow anything that's remotely violent, and Genmoji can't be used to create any copyrighted characters or celebrities.
With Image Playground, you can actually make creations that feature celebrities by uploading a picture, but that's not an option for Genmoji.
You can generate a gun, but the gun can't shoot, even if you want it to shoot bubbles or water. Words like "shooting" are off limits in combination with words like gun.
Apple won't let you make copyrighted items, even an iPhone. Given Genmoji's tendency to warp items, it's no shock that you can't create a funny-looking iPhone.
Anatomy and Facial Expressions
Genmoji is really bad at facial expressions and emotions. It can mostly get happy and sad, but anything with any nuance likely isn't going to happen.
As for anatomy, you're not always going to get the correct number of fingers, toes, or limbs for your creations, but that's not atypical with AI.
Multiple People
Genmoji can't generate something with more than one person, and if you try, it will tell you to describe just one person.
Text
Like most image generation engines, Genmoji doesn't do well with text. Text almost always comes out looking garbled.
What Genmoji Does Really Well
Genmoji works well with animals, even animals that aren't super common. It won't get down to a species level, so you can't, for example, make an accurate swallowtail butterfly, but as long as you're not looking for that kind of specifi... Click here to read rest of article
Article Link: What You Can and Can't Make With iOS 18.2's Genmoji Feature
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