Young users of the iPhone keep asking for emojis that are out of the way, unique and may take years to become a reality. Apple has a solution: Using Apple Intelligence, which is the company’s new AI suite, users can create their custom emoji and images, Apple announced at WWDC 2024.

Called Genmoji, the results look fun. During the keynote presentation, the company showcased how the prompt “smiley relaxing wearing cucumbers” generates a yellow smiley face emoji with cucumbers over its eyes. Not happy? Swipe to select a different option.

The feature isn’t expected to be officially available until later this fall but from the presentation there don’t seem to be any major limitations to what you can come up with.Of course, we are certain that Apple will put restrictions for Genmoji when it comes to graphic/unsuitable prompts.

You can also use AI to choose a photo of the friend you’re texting and turn it into an emoji. Not happy? Go ahead and share that as a sticker or a tapback response to a text message.

The creation of an emoji is a cumbersome process, so it’s nice to see Apple simply the process. At present, Unicode 15.1 supports just a few less than 3,800 various emojis. But that’s never enough for a young user.

Image Playground

If Genmojis are not enough for you, Apple has announced a new feature called Image Playground. Use generative AI to create images for use in Messages; in Apple’s Freeform and Pages apps; and in a new Image Playground dedicated app.

The images that get generated have a cartoonish quality to them but that’s intentional on Apple’s part because there has been too much controversy about AI-manufactured images that are realistic enough to fool people into thinking they’re actual photos.