SwiftKey, a keyboard app which is now owned by Microsoft, has introduced a new animated emoji feature directly into its mobile keyboard app that uses the artificial intelligence (AI) technology to replicate a person’s detailed facial expressions inside a 3D animal character.
The feature is called Swiftkey Puppet and is similar to Animoji on iOS or Samsung‘s AR Emoji. Users can record themselves as a dinosaur, cat, owl, dog, or panda and have their phone’s camera track their face so the app can animate their facial movements.
In order to create this feature, SwiftKey says that it tapped thousands of images and videos from volunteers to train a deep neural network capable of identifying each person’s expressions and movements in real time.
Since the Swiftkey Puppet is embedded in the keyboard app itself, it works with just about any app, though the ease of use varies. For instance, sending a video through Slack, Facebook Messenger, and Telegram requires you to select the recipient again even if you’re already in a message thread with them.
As per some user reports, the Puppets feature is still very rough as it doesn’t track mouth movements very well and sometimes it seems out of sync. Currently, the feature is in beta, so this will likely improve over time.
Microsoft had acquired SwiftKey for around $250 million more than three years ago, and since then, the company has brought a number of new features to the app, including in-keyboard web search. The keyboard is notable for its extensibility, with users able to customize and add features — including GIFs, new theme options, translations, and a clipboard — to the keyboard’s top menu bar.
(Source)
