They say a picture is worth a thousand words. But that was before we had emojis. And before emojis had AI.

Emojis have taken over communication ~ Emojis are becoming a phenomenon in and of itself as social media users and advertisers use them more and more. When we converse face-to-face, people replicate each other's expressions and emotions, even though we are largely unconscious of this throughout life. A major component of how we demonstrate empathy and form connections is this emotional contagion. However, we're lacking that vital component of empathy and feeling when we're online. That is until emoticons and emojis came along. Researchers have found that the same brain regions are stimulated when we gaze at an online happy face as when we look at a real human face. Our emotions shift, and we may even modify the way we look to reflect the emoticon's emotion.


Emojis About To Get More Immersive Soon! 
(Source: Google Images) 

Apple is developing software for users to create customized emojis on the go as part of a new spate of generative AI features, according to Bloomberg. These features go beyond the catalog of emojis Apple offers by creating a special emoji for each situation. Siri is also getting a generative AI makeover. With the help of Apple's large language models, its virtual assistant will sound more natural, and the Apple Watch will get a more advanced version of Siri to assist with tasks on the go, Bloomberg reported. Apple hopes the technology will also help Siri improve upon the tasks it already does, like responding to questions, and take on new tasks like summarizing text messages.

Apple also aims to release new AI features for iOS 18 and macOS 15 to transcribe voice memos, retouch photos, and speed up and improve search results. Next month, Apple will likely discuss some of these features at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference. The company has been pretty quiet about its generative AI strategy — especially compared to other tech giants like Google and Microsoft — but that doesn't mean you should count it out of the AI arms race. CEO Tim Cook promised in February that "AI "will affect every product and service we have."


iOS 18 Will allow users to create custom emoji using generative AI 
(Source: 9 to 5 Mac) 

It's par for the course for Apple to be a little late to the announcement game. "Apple is very rarely first to market," Carolina Milanesi, principal analyst at Creative Strategies, a tech consulting firm, previously told Business Insider. "They prefer to come in and disrupt the market — take anything from wearables to smartphones to tablets. They've never been first."

Additionally, if users are concerned about AI reading their conversations, they should be able to turn off generative emojis in their messages. However, we anticipate that Apple will upgrade iMessage's robust encryption to support generative AI emojis. On Android, Google takes a similar stance. It has integrated its Gemini AI into Android's Google Messages. You may utilize AI to enhance your responses using the Magic Compose function. Instead of on Google's servers, the data is processed on the device. The preceding 20 messages in a conversation are visible to Gemini for context, and the RCS texts are still end-to-end encrypted.