Genmoji has no soul

“Some descriptions may create unexpected results” is the line that appears whenever you create an AI-generated Genmoji on iOS 18.2. It's an understatement and a half.

Genmoji is a fun feature – putting emoji-like images inline with text – bundled with an AI slop generator. The former would be amazing without the latter.

I'll start with some positives. If there is an object, animal or food that you think should be an emoji, but isn't: Genmoji will do an acceptable (ish) decent job of fixing that.

Want a chocolate cake instead of this 🎂 or this 🍰 or this 🧁? You got it.

Particular about sending a platypus or capybara? No big deal:

Though anyone would agree this is not a good platypus. Emoji designers generally agree that animals should be displayed as a head or body, depending on what makes the creature most distinctive. And for the platypus, no human designer would decide on the face.

Really need a shelving unit or drone? Yep, objects are fine:

Genmoji gives unlimited choice when it comes to each creation. Keep scrolling (and waiting 3-15 seconds per Genmoji to generate) and you'll get more options.

The drone is kinda goofy looking. It's okay conceptually, but what if I want something more realistic? Well, here's a bunch more of...the exact same drone:

Let me remind you, this is the good part. The imagery appears to be trained on Apple emoji images, so the style is consistent. But this also limits what it can do.

Try creating anything with emotion and Genmoji reveals its robotic core. It just doesn't know how to do it.

A not-so brief summary of Genmoji issues

Yes Genmoji is in beta. It will get better. But as it stands in iOS 18.2 (coming out of beta sometime in December), I'm haven't created a single Genmoji that was useful.

What issues did I run into along the way? In my week of testing, I simply typed ideas or concepts that would appeal to me personally, and then a bunch that I know are somewhat common requests for Unicode emojis.

I don't feel it necessary to put a disclaimer about being a former Unicode Emoji Subcommittee member here, but in case you want one, here it is.

• Niches aren't understood: I wanted a British narrowboat - Genmoji didn't know what that is. Or a cargo bike, surely it's not that niche? Genmoji has no idea about either.

• Brands, logos, teams. Not permitted. I understand why, but it's an area that Unicode emojis don't touch - and neither does Genmoji.

Language

• Search parsing is bad. Genmoji tries to use your contacts so if I say "Warwick Long on the radio" it will find my friend Warwick Long in contacts, and show him on the radio. Very Bitmoji-esque.
• But when I searched for 'long boat', Genmoji also showed Warwick Long. On a boat. And I couldn't turn that off.
• Searching for 'white wine' (another popular Unicode emoji request) showed a friend with the surname 'White' drinking a...red wine. No the three little dots didn't let me say 'um, don't use a person for this'. But I could pick a different person to hold the red wine.

• Country specific items lack, too. Australian treats like a lamington or sausage roll were either blanked, or misunderstood.
• Compared to the greatness of Google's hand-crafted Emoji Kitchen mashups, Genmoji embarrasses itself when it even tries a basic combination of two existing emojis. No Genmoji doesn't bill itself as an 'emoji mashup' machine, but I'm just floundering here attempting to find something it is good at.

Flags

Flags are messy, there's no two ways about it. Categorising people under a single banner or flag is difficult for humans to do. Flags require a nuanced understanding of culture and history. Two areas AI is notoriously lacking.

• If you ask Genmoji to create 'a flag', you'll get all manner of country flags generated. Some real, some imagined. But if you ask for a specific country, you won't get any results.

• Flag on fire? Can't be done. Flag in the rain? Nope. Just your own country flag? Still no. You can get a random assortment of flags, but not one you ask for.
• So many flags are frequently requested over the years, meanwhile Unicode has been slowly getting out of the flag-approval game. Leaving a perfect opportunity for something like Genmoji to fill the gap.
• Bi pride flag, Pan pride flag, Aboriginal Australian flag, Catalan flag. All outside of the remit of Unicode, but also refused by Genmoji. So what's even the point?
• There is a weird hack: just write the word you want, without 'flag. Eg type 'pansexual' or 'bisexual' instead of 'pansexual flag' or 'bisexual flag' and you'll get some kind of similar imagery:

• But the colors are mostly wrong. And they're not flags. You might find something you like. But it's a lot of prompt guessing and scrolling to find something even remotely usable.
• Worse: type 'Aboriginal Australian' and you get the actual flag of Australia (🇦🇺), in a half-flag-half-circle shape. Which might explain why flags are banned. Getting a flag like this wrong is misleading at the very least, but also offensive.

As a release valve for creating emojis that wouldn't get approved by Unicode, Genmoji fails. It's somehow both too ambitious and not ambitious enough at the same time.

And yet, I could overlook all this, if new emotions could easily be generated. A whole swathe of new emotional range!

But Genmoji is incapable of understanding human emotion, or intent.

Robotic

The emotional range on offer is somehow less than the already-existing emojis. Basically - happy, sad or crying.

Here's me podcasting through the tears. Oh wait, the humans can't show tears. So here's an emoji person doing the same thing instead.

What if it's all too much and I want to lie on the floor? Uh, sure.

It almost gets a pass for trying new smiley-style emojis that don't yet exist, but typing out a string and scrolling to find a half-acceptable creation is unfulfilling.

There's wildly talented designers at Apple. They can't be happy having their work appear alongside this sort of stuff.

What Gemoji can do that emoji can't

• produce a range of guns
• create items like a condom or tampon, though the results get weird if you scroll:

• 'me as X holding Y' works fairly consistently. You can have animals holding food. I made myself a clown holding a knife, which is...something I guess?

• pick an existing emoji, but present it in your colour of choice. Orange cat. Black dog. Green car. These all work fairly well. Oh wait.

• new landmarks, like Tower Bridge will work. Sydney Harbour Bridge (genuinely) has some pleasing results, adding some whimsy with balloons, or a dog. Tower Bridge occasionally gets a big smiley or crown on it. But other times it doesn't.

• bizarre versions of your local cuisine. Enjoy a Guinness or a traditional Italian pizza. Oh wait sorry, we're back in the bad place again.

Try it for yourself and you'll see, I'm not trying to trick Genmoji into giving me bad results here. It's much more work to create good and useful results. The funny stuff just comes without even trying.

Technical implementation

Genmoji only works in text fields that support images. True text-only fields like the comments of an Instagram or TikTok post, an email subject, or an SMS aren't compatible with Genmoji.

It's also exclusive to Apple platforms. At least the part where the Genmojis appear inline with text, like a real emoji would.

The future of Genmoji

Apple describes Genmoji as:

Taking emoji to an entirely new level, users can create an original Genmoji to express themselves. By simply typing a description, their Genmoji appears, along with additional options. Users can even create Genmoji of friends and family based on their photos.

Genmoji seeks to fill that gap of emojis that don't exist. And yet it refuses to create the most useful ones, and misunderstands the rest.

If we get true portable inline images within text as a cross-platform standard in future, I trust that AI generated images won't be the best use of this technology.

Give me an OG Gmail hug emoji over this AI generated junk any day.

One final note: Genmoji gets your phone HOT. A 20 min session creating Genmojis had by battery down considerably, and a heat warning.