Tech monster Microsoft’s SwiftKey has embedded a new animated emoji feature directly into its mobile keyboard app swaying artificial intelligence (AI) to replicate a person’s detailed facial expressions inside a 3D animal character.
The feature called puppet, allows users to transfer their facial expressions to a panda, cat, dog, owl, or even a dinosaur and these ‘puppets’ are said to have been trained using thousands of images and videos of people making expressions to track and record facial movements, news portal 9 To 5 Mac reported late on Friday.
SwiftKey
“People want to type fast, and SwiftKey is perfect for that,” said Microsoft product manager Deepak Paramanand in a blog post. “They also want to express themselves in a fun and interesting way, and now SwiftKey is perfect for that, too.”
Microsoft acquired SwiftKey for a reported $250 million more than three years ago, and it has since brought a number of new features to the app, including in-keyboard web search. The keyboard is outstanding for its affability, with users able to customize and add features including GIFs, new theme options and much more. Personalized 3D animal emojis are now part of the mix, too.
Users would be able to record up to 30 seconds of video and audio to share but it requires a device running on at least Android 7.0 Nougat or above. Probably, once the beta tests are satisfied with the quality of the feature, it will be be made available to all users with Android devices across the globe.
