Have you ever wanted to turn your face into an emoji and send it to your friends? Well now you can with Memoji. I keep repeating it’s name over and over again, pronouncing it in different ways. Because I’m not really sure which is correct. Either way, the app lets you take a selfie and transform your face into an emoji. Apple has done a good job of trying to be more diverse with their emojis. Letting you pick a skin tone similar to your own in some cases. So why would you want to make an emoji of your face? I’m not really sure. Nor am I really convinced that this app is going to have an impact, but lets have a look first.
All it does is lets you turn your face into an emoji. I’ve said that about six times in this post already. And that’s it. But lets talk more about how it changes your face into an emoji. Memoji uses artificial intelligence (AI) and image processing technology to modify your facial expressions. Which is pretty cool in my opinion, even if I’m not a big fan of this app.
But it has it’s limitations. Let’s start with the types of emoji’s you can use – happy face crying (maybe it’s supposed to be laughing so hard you’re crying?), angry, heart kiss, purple devil, smile, one tear down your cheek, a unicorn (but it remains to be seen what you can do with that one), green “getting sick”, heart eyes, sad face, and cool sunglasses. Which I’m not sure if that covers it. I mean, what about grimacing, or stunned, or sleepy emoji. Maybe the limitations are the fact that these emoji’s use teeth or other things to make them look real. But I think they’ve missed the mark a bit on the types of emojis to use.
As far as the app goes, I think it’s limited. Sure, its fun and provides some entertainment to you and your friends, but that’s about it. The app does allow you to save the emoji as an image, GIF or video, but none are really appealing to me. Based on the images I used, I didn’t feel like I would want to share that with my friends. It just made me look like I had eaten something sour, and my glasses had become my eyebrows.
Before I share some images that I used to create emojis, have a look at this video showing you what can be done with Memoji.
First up, smiling Meryl Streep. It’s kind of creepy in my opinion. But maybe her high cheek bones really make the emoji seem real.
And now, Meryl getting sick. It looks like she’s puckering her lips instead of, I assume pushing out her cheeks in an attempt to hold back getting sick? I don’t know. I realize that it’s all for fun, but do you really turn that shade of green when you’re sick? Maybe I’m being too hard on the emoji, as I have said it’s just for fun. But I like a little bit of reality in here.
I did enjoy making this next one. I imagine the setting for this photo was something like this: Donald Trump says something that makes you want to cry. But it’s so ridiculous, you have to laugh/smile at the same time. So here’s an issue with the app. Or at least what I would deem an issue. I guess your face has to be “dead plan” in order for emoji’s to actually work. With Obama, I took a smiling photo and applied a crying filter to it. It just kind of looks like he’s confused.
Using the same image, I applied the “sad face” emoji to Obama, and this is what it looks like. Again, happy Obama with pushed up eyebrows. I’m not buying it. If I want to make my face look a certain way, I would just pose that way. I mean, why go to all the trouble of putting a picture of yourself in an app and then applying filter after filter?
And lastly, it doesn’t work with all images. Ok, in this instance, there might not be enough of the person’s face to adequately change the expression. However, I used some pictures of a friend of mine and got the same message. The difference being, each of the images of my friend were square face shots. The ability to not recognize faces is a bit concerning. But also upsetting that you get the following message:
It’s upsetting because it insinuates that I’m posting a picture of my pet, or a piece of pizza. I was kind of offended. I also didn’t understand why so many pictures of my friend wouldn’t work. I literally tried one after another after another because I was convinced that there was some larger issue with the app. Now I won’t get into that as I don’t have the evidence to back up my claim. But this issue definitely made me dislike the app a little more.
To sum up the app:
Pros: it’s fun and entertaining.
Cons: it doesn’t work with all photos of faces. Or it doesn’t appear to. It doesn’t really turn your face into an emoji, but rather distorts your facial expression. It’s kind of offensive to call a picture of a person a piece of pizza. As with the Obama example, it doesn’t really change the expression at all. You can’t stop him from smiling. Maybe he’s the exception – or at least that type of photo, but then maybe you should say: “take selfie with dead pan expression on your face”.
Cost: Free.
Aye/Nay: Definitely a nay for me. It might be fun for some people, but I doubt that I will use it to send a picture to anyone.
iTunes Link: Memoji by FaceTune