Thursday, November 7, 2024
NewsPatents

Apple wants to make it easy to record and send emojis

This graphic shows an user interfaces for generating and sending emojis, stickers, virtual avatars, and/or other multimedia content.

Apple wants to make it easy to record and send emojis, as evidenced by a new patent application (number US 20240331256 A1).

About the patent filing

An emoji is a pictogram, logogram, ideogram, or smiley embedded in text and used in electronic messages and web pages.

Apple’s Animojis allow a user to choose an avatar (e.g., a puppet) to represent themselves. The Animoji can move and talk as if it were a video of the user. Animojis enable users to create personalized versions of emojis in a fun and creative way, and Memoji is the name used for Apple’s personalized “Animoji” characters that can be created and customized right within Messages by choosing from a set of inclusive and diverse characteristics to form a unique personality. 

In the patent filing, Apple notes that multimedia content, such as emojis and virtual avatars, are sometimes sent as part of messaging communications. The emojis and virtual avatars represent a variety of predefined people, objects, actions, and/or other things. Some messaging applications allow users to select from a predefined library of emojis and virtual avatars which are sent as part of a message that can contain other content (e.g., other multimedia and/or textual content). 

Stickers are another type of multimedia content that are sometimes sent with messaging applications. In some ways, stickers are similar to emojis and virtual avatars in that they can represent people, objects, actions, and/or other things. 

Some stickers and/or messaging applications allow for stickers to be associated with previously sent or received messages. To make all this more interesting and fun, Apple wants users to be able to record and send Animojis and Memojis.

Summary of the patent filing

Here’s Apple’s abstract of the patent filing: “The present disclosure generally relates to generating and modifying virtual avatars. An electronic device having a camera and a display apparatus displays a virtual avatar that changes appearance in response to changes in a face in a field of view of the camera. In response to detecting changes in one or more physical features of the face in the field of view of the camera, the electronic device modifies one or more features of the virtual avatar.”

I hope you’ll help support Apple World Today by becoming a patron. All our income is from Patreon support and sponsored posts. Patreon pricing ranges from $2 to $10 a month. Thanks in advance for your support.

Dennis Sellers
the authorDennis Sellers
Dennis Sellers is the editor/publisher of Apple World Today. He’s been an “Apple journalist” since 1995 (starting with the first big Apple news site, MacCentral). He loves to read, run, play sports, and watch movies.