How Apple’s Genmojis will work in iOS 18

Genmojis will be similar to regular emojis, except that they’re customised, according to an iOS 18 WWDC session focused on Genmojis. Emojis are not images, but rather pictograms that are encoded in the Unicode standard and rendered by each platform.

To use Genmojis, you’ll simply type in a prompt and the AI will create it specifically for you. For example, the image above was created with the text “a Labrador with sunglasses”. Genmojis are housed in the same virtual keyboard as emojis.

But emojis are determined by the Unicode Consortium, which has raised some questions about how Apple’s Genmoji solution will work.

It turns out that Apple has designed a – brace yourselves – NSAdaptiveImageGlyph API (Application Programming Interface) for Genmojis, as well as for other images like stickers and memojis. This API makes them behave like emojis. This approach means that Genmojis and other content using NSAdaptiveImageGlyph can be used and formatted alongside plain text, similar to emojis.

A Genmoji can be used alone, copied, pasted or sent as a sticker. It can be used with text and will respect text height and text formatting. According to Apple, Genmojis can be used wherever Rich Text Format (RTF) is supported.

Genmojis are not yet in the developer work for iOS 18, but Apple plans to let developers start testing Apple Intelligence sometime this summer. Genmojis and Apple Intelligence will be available to the public this autumn, but will be limited to iPhone 15 Pro models and iPads and Macs with M-chips.

Want to learn more about iOS 18? Check out our iOS 18 guide. Plus, we have concerns about the way that Apple Intelligence could affect email communications but there are other features, such as Vehicle Motion Cues, that we can’t wait to try.