What you can and can't create with Genmoji

With a release iOS 18.2 And iPadOS 18.2, Apple introduced a feature Genmoji, a feature that lets you create custom emoji if there isn’t an existing emoji for what you want. You can create Genmoji from the emoji panel in Messages, Notes, and more, and they work just like regular emoji. Like Image Playground, Genmoji is heavily restricted to prevent people from creating unacceptable images, and these restrictions can make it difficult to create what you’re looking for.

With that in mind, we'll highlight some of what you can and can't do with these custom emojis for now.

Remember: The Genmoji feature works with devices that support Apple's intelligence, and also your device's language must be English and the region settings must be America or any country where Apple's intelligence is available.

Human bodies and stereotypes

When creating any human-like emoji, the system asks you to choose a human model as a reference, whether it’s a photo of yourself or a friend from your photo library, or even a standard emoji. This limitation is there for a reason: Apple’s AI can’t automatically decide on characteristics like skin color, race, or gender.

However, this system has obvious limitations and challenges. For example, when trying to create a simple cartoon character like a gingerbread man, you won’t get the expected result because the system will insist on mapping it to a real person. Also, most of the results are limited to showing only the head and shoulders, making it difficult to get full body poses or depict certain activities effectively.

Human-like creatures and objects

The Genmoji app has a hard time creating human-like creatures if they aren’t based on a real person or existing emoji. For example, when trying to create simple garden gnomes, there’s a real problem: The app produces an image of a person wearing a pixie hat instead of the desired garden gnome, even when using different phrases like “gnome,” “garden gnome,” or “gnome statue.”

While some attempts may work with certain wordings like “gnome statue,” the results are not guaranteed and are inconsistent. This also applies to different mythical creatures, where the results vary widely and it’s not possible to predict what will and won’t work. These strict restrictions from Apple make using the feature frustrating at times.

Successful and unsuccessful creatures in Jinmoji

The Genmoji feature has successfully created a variety of mythical creatures, such as the Sasquatch, the Dragon, the Minotaur, the Phoenix, and the Hydra, as well as other popular creatures such as the Unicorn, the Leprechaun, and the Goblin. It has also successfully created lesser-known creatures such as the Hippogriff, the Infernal Hound, the Manticore, and the Sphinx.

In contrast, the app failed to create well-known creatures such as the mermaid, the kraken (a sea monster), the wyvern, the basilisk (a mythical snake), and the cockatrice (a half-cock, half-snake monster). It also failed to create creatures from local folklore such as the chupacabra, the tanuki (a goat vampire, believed to attack livestock and suck their blood, and is typically described as a reptile-like creature with a row of spines on its back and glowing red eyes), the jackalope, the chimera (a composite monster), and the golem (a clay creature). In some cases, alternative words can be used to produce similar results, such as using “sea monster” instead of “kraken.”

Creatures that required a human personality

In this category of creatures, the Genmoji app asks for a human character as the basis for creation, but the results can be mixed in terms of its success in creating an exactly similar character. For example, when trying to create the following mythical creatures:

When creating a vampire and a werewolf, the feature required adding a person and using them as the basis for the character. When creating a centaur (half-human, half-horse), the app added horns to the human character, while for an orc (a creature from fantasy), it simply put the person in war armor. In other cases, such as a selkie (a creature from Scottish mythology) and anubis (a sacred figure from ancient Egypt with the head of a dog), the app generated a picture of a regular person without any distinctive modifications to reflect the nature of these mythical creatures.

Violence, nudity, celebrities, and copyright

Genmoji does not allow the creation of any content that includes violence, even minor ones, and it is forbidden to create celebrity characters or any copyrighted characters. For example, you can create a gun, but you cannot make it shoot even if you mean to shoot bubbles or water, and the word “shoot” is strictly forbidden when combined with the word gun.

Unlike Image Playground, which lets you create content featuring celebrities by uploading their photos, Genmoji doesn’t offer that option. It also doesn’t allow you to create copyrighted products, even if it’s the iPhone itself. Given the app’s tendency to distort things, it’s no surprise that you can’t create a funny iPhone image, for example.

Facial Expressions and Anatomy

Genmoji faces significant challenges in creating facial expressions and emotions. It can only handle basic emotions like happiness and sadness, but lacks the ability to show subtle and complex emotional expressions. It also has difficulties in accurately drawing human anatomy, as it may not be able to show the correct number of fingers and limbs in the drawings it produces.

Restrictions on drawing people

One of the major limitations of the Genmoji feature is the inability to create images containing more than one person. When a user tries to request a drawing of multiple people, the program will automatically direct the user to describe only one person, making it only suitable for creating single images.

Texts and writing

Like most image generation engines, Genmoji has difficulty handling text and writing. When asked to add text to images, the text often appears garbled and illegible, making this feature ineffective.

Strengths of the Genmoji feature

Genmoji is excellent at drawing animals, even uncommon ones, though it can't handle fine details at the species level. It also excels at combining animals with different objects and creating various items. Although some complex objects like the saxophone and violin may appear inaccurate, the program generally does a good job of creating and combining different objects.

Open Concepts Experience with Genmoji

One of the best ways to understand how Genmoji works is to experiment with open-ended descriptions and concepts, not just specific objects. When you enter words like “delicious” or “yummy,” the program generates images of various dishes and desserts, such as cakes, pasta, and meat, and sometimes adds unexpected elements like balloons.

When it comes to emotions and feelings like “warm” and “comfortable,” it tends to create images of cute animals like teddy bears, kittens, and bunnies, or emojis wrapped in blankets. It can also create cozy items like rocking chairs and sunsets, though some results may be unexpected or not fit the description.

It’s important to note that Genmoji generates different images each time, even when you repeat the same description. When you enter words like “scary,” you might get different strange creatures each time, such as monsters, spiders, and fanged octopuses. This variety in results is because the images are generated in real time, making each experience unique.

Tips for using Genmoji

When you’re having trouble getting the desired result, you can rephrase and rearrange the words to get better results. For example, when asking for “Santa Raccoon,” the feature might require a person, but “Santa Raccoon” or “Raccoon in Santa Hat” would give the desired result. In general, simple descriptions tend to produce the best results, as Jinmoji has a hard time dealing with many, specific details.

Apple's Genmoji Ad Is Misleading

Apple ran an ad for Genmoji, and as AppleInsider points out, the ad was wildly misleading. The ad featured images that weren’t created using Apple Intelligence, and used phrases that couldn’t actually be implemented in the feature. Some of the descriptions used in the ad required tweaks to work, others couldn’t be implemented at all, and some were just weird and unexpected.

Experience using Apple's advertising phrases

When we tested the descriptions used in the Apple ad, the results varied widely. Some phrases worked with a few tweaks, like “elf statue” instead of just “elf,” and some descriptions, like “foam,” required more specificity, like “a pile of shaving foam with eyes and a smile.” Some simple phrases, like “pink comb” and “chrome skeleton,” worked right away.

The feature struggled to create some complex or composite images. For example, when asking for “balloon dog,” it had to change the phrase to “balloon animal in the shape of a dog.” When trying to create “tomato spy,” it had to use a more detailed description like “tomato wearing a detective uniform with sunglasses.” Some elements, like “noodles with peas,” also didn’t appear quite as expected.

There were surprises in the results, both positive and negative. For example, “pig in the sky” worked better with the word “winged.” Asking for “can of worms” was unexpected, with cans of worms instead of cans full of worms. And some phrases, like “golden smile,” produced results that were completely different from the ones in the Apple ad, with a creepy gold tooth in a face when using the phrase “smiling gold tooth.”

This is some of everything, but not all, that is stated in the advertisement.

Unsuccessful phrases in Apple advertisement

Genmoji also struggled with many of the phrases used in Apple’s ad. When trying to create “Socrates on skis,” the program always asked for a normal person, and couldn’t create historical figures. It also failed to correctly create “12-sided die,” and “walking chair,” which always appeared as a normal chair. It had similar difficulties with “small painting of man in hat,” which only showed the emoji character’s head and shoulders.

The Genmoji feature also showed clear limitations in handling some concepts. When asked for “heart tattoo,” it only produced emoji hearts or a real heart with a pen. It also flat-out refused to create a “Gizmo” and asked for a different description. When trying to create “little egg man excitedly raising his hands,” it either produced an emoji character collecting eggs, or an egg with arms, with bizarre results when trying to modify the description.

Share Genmoji with other devices

The appearance of Genmoji images varies depending on the receiving device. Users with iOS 18.1 or iOS 18.2 will see the images as emoji in iMessage conversations. Users with Android devices or devices running older versions of iOS or macOS will see Genmoji as a regular image in a text conversation.

Battery consumption

Creating multiple Genmoji or images using Image Playground is a huge drain on your battery, because all the processing is done on the iPhone itself. For example, an hour and a half spent creating Genmoji can cause your battery level to drop from over 50% to 5%.

Source:

macrumors