About

Animoji are animated emoji introduced as part of iOS 11 for the iPhone X made by Apple. Using face-capture technology, Animoji mimic the facial expressions of the user and records their audio, which is then filtered through a voice modulator corresponding to which Animoji character is used.

Origin

On September 12th, 2017, Apple announced the Animoji for iOS 11 (shown below).^[1] At the event, they showed off twelve emoji characters, including a unicorn, dog, cat, poo, and others.

Spread

On October 31st, 2017, PC Mag put out a YouTube video demonstrating the different characters that gained 24,000 views (shown below). Animoji were released on November 3rd, 2017.

Quickly after release, there were tutorials and reviews of the feature on tech sites such as Select All^[2] and The Verge.^[3] In The Verge's piece, writer Vlad Savov noted that the feature could be a revolutionary means of communication, writing, "The key is in the depersonalization and the stripping of extraneous information that animoji provide: things like how messy your room is, how puffy your face is, and so on are simply taken out." He cites a video made by a co-worker's daughter as an example (shown below).

Animoji Karaoke

On November 1st, tech writer Harry McCracken uploaded a video of the Fox animoji moving it's mouth along with the lyrics of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody,". making it appear as though it were lip-syncing with the song. McCracken dubbed the format "Animoji Karaoke." The tweet gained 830 retweets and 2,300 likes (shown below).

Over the following days, McCracken and others uploaded similar videos using Animoji, iOS11, and iMovie. Popular examples include a tweet by @jsnell which uses Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" (shown below, top) and a tweet by @NickStarr which uses Baha Men's "Who Let The Dogs Out?" (shown below, bottom). McCracken wrote in Fast Company^[4] a piece detailing how he started the trend. It was also covered by The Verge,^[5] Buzzfeed,^[6] Select All,^[7] and more.

Memoji

On June 4th, 2018, Apple unveiled a new feature to be paired with Animoji called "Memoji" in which users will be able to customize avatars and save them on their phone to use in conversations.^[8] Additionally, Apple unveiled "tongue detection" so that when a user sticks out their tongue in the creation of their Animoji, the phone will detect it and add a tongue to the Animoji.

The day of release, several YouTubers demonstrated the features on their channel. User iJustine did so and gained over 273,000 views (shown below, left), while YouTuber iPhonedo did the same and gained over 26,000 views (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References