Samsung’s Galaxy S9 AR Emoji

Samsung’s Galaxy S9 AR Emoji are kind of horrifying

One of Samsung’s messages with the new Galaxy S9 is that it’s “Built for the Way We Communicate Today.” And while that’s a laudable goal, one of the key features behind that message AR Emoji doesn’t feel like it connects with the way anyone communicates now, or will want to in the future. At least I hope not.

AR Emoji will widely be seen as a response to Animoji, the new iPhone X emoji that use face scanning technology to convert facial movement into animated animals that you can send as messages. But the idea and implementation is actually very different. The Galaxy S9 relies entirely on conventional photos from the selfie camera rather than Apple’s complex 3D sensor array, yet attempts to produce something more ambitious and fraught with potential disaster: realistic, yet cartoonist, depictions of your own face.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the results are mixed.

We'll have to spend more time with the Galaxy S9 to deliver the final verdict on AR Emoji, and of course the phone's overall success isn't going to hinge on them. But from our brief testing, they're a plane crash right into the depths of the Uncanny Valley. They’re not abstract enough to be cute, yet not realistic enough to be authentic.

Samsung may have been a little too ambitious on a technical level, but even then I’m not sure the idea is sound. There’s a reason why Snapchat filters tend to turn you into a bear or a Pokémon rather than yourself. And to that end, Samsung has actually announced that various Disney characters will also be available as AR Emoji which is a much better idea, but one that brings us right back to Animoji.

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