Everyone seems to be getting on the custom emoji train these days. That includes Google, which is bringing Allo’s ‘Selfe stickers’ feature to Gboard keyboard.
The feature has started rolling out to Android users. It released to iPhone users in July.
Now called ‘Mini’ stickers, users can easily create a custom emoji experience. When you first launch Mini stickers from Gboard, it asks you to take a selfie.
The magic begins after taking that selfie. Some mystic Google machine learning algorithm crafts a personalized emoji from your photo. It gives you a chance to tweak it after, should Google get it wrong.
The machine learning observes characteristics like skin tone, hair colour and style, eye colour, face shape and facial hair.
Mini stickers started off as Selfie Stickers in Allo. Google released the feature in 2017. However, the search giant seems to be moving Allo features to other apps.
On top of the stickers available in Allo, Minis includes 100 new stickers based on the personalized avatar. The stickers also come in two flavours: Bold and Sweet. The two flavours give you slightly different emotive styles to fit your mood.
Mini stickers should be in the stickers tab in Gboard, next to Bitmoji.
Speaking of Bitmoji, Google’s Mini stickers seem very similar. However, not everyone is convinced that Mini stickers are that great.
I’m feeling way better about my Bitmoji persona than this broke-down South Park version of myself that Google made pic.twitter.com/2zYiEi04hP
— Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) August 27, 2018
Regardless, its good to see more companies providing fun features like this. These features can really help keep users on a specific platform.
Update 09/13/2018: The sticker pack is now available on Android. Article was updated to reflect the change.
Source: Engadget
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