Apple announces Animoji, animated versions of Emoji, which uses iPhone X's face tracking hardware to create custom 3D emoji based on your facial expressions
Tom Warren / The Verge :
Context & Ripple Effects
Animoji turns the iPhone X’s facial-sensing system into a consumer-facing creative feature alongside its Face ID facial model, giving Apple’s new hardware a visible use beyond unlocking and payments.
The feature became a reference point for later avatar products: Xiaomi introduced a similar Mimoji feature, while TikTok’s customizable TikTok Avatars extended the format into a social platform.
First-order effects
- iPhone X users can map their facial expressions onto animated 3D emoji, making the device’s face-tracking hardware part of messaging and self-expression.
- Apple gains a demonstrable software use for iPhone X facial sensing that is distinct from Face ID authentication.
Second-order effects
- Phone makers seeking comparable expressive features face pressure to pair facial sensing with avatar software, as reflected in Xiaomi’s Mimoji launch.
- Messaging keyboards and social apps can treat animated avatars as a product surface rather than a device-specific novelty; SwiftKey later rolled out Puppets with expression replication on Android.
Third-order effects
- If avatar tools continue to spread across phones and social platforms, facial capture becomes a general-purpose interface layer for identity and communication, not solely a security capability.
- Apple’s later work on animated 3D avatars from video suggests the underlying direction moves from stylized emoji toward richer personalized representations.
The trend: Consumer facial sensing is evolving from an authentication feature into a software layer for personalized avatars and expressive communication.