Why be an adorable animated bear, chicken, or dragon when you can be an adorable animated you? If you own a new-enough iPhone, you’ll soon be able to create an Animoji in your own image—a Memoji. Apple announced the latest addition to its roster of virtual avatars at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference, which began Monday in San Jose, California.
The Memoji, which will be included in the forthcoming iOS 12, is customizable. You can choose your skin color, hairstyle, accessories, and other features, like freckles. And you can use it like an Animoji, sharing it in messenger or super-imposing it onto whatever your iPhone camera captures.
It’s still unclear where exactly the Memoji will rank among the current crop of mobile avatars. Apple’s latest AR offering comes just a few months after Samsung created its own AR emoji. And it’s already sparked some resistance from fans of Snapchat’s Bitmoji.
At WWDC, Apple also announced additional updates for Animojis, including a ghost, tiger, and T-Rex. There’s also a new “tongue detection” ability, which basically means that when you stick your tongue out, so does your avatar. (Progress!)
Ahead of the conference, Apple promoted the Animoji updates in a video shared on its main YouTube channel on June 3. The video shows Animojis singing along to “Citizen Kane” by the Korean band HYUKOH and was originally uploaded to Apple’s Korean channel on May 21.
The company revealed the Animoji along with its iPhone X last September. The Animoji uses the iPhone X’s TrueDepth camera to analyze your facial expressions and create an animated character. Animojis can be shared, made into stickers, and saved as videos.
