I Want to Love It, but Apple’s Genmoji Has a Major Problem

Notification summaries might be a useful feature for AI to tackle, but the true star of Apple Intelligence is Genmoji. Creating your own emoji pictures on the fly is fun and could even be helpful in communication. However, its speed is its major flaw.

Genmoji Is an Apple Intelligence Feature Worth Improving

The flashiest part of many artificial intelligence products is image generation. It’s still novel and, frankly, a bit mind-blowing. Apple’s current image generation efforts are split into two areas. First is the Image Playground app, which will draw or animate people you know and generate images from prompts. But it’s purposefully limited in scope right out of the gate. Genmoji is the other image-creation feature.

You can find Genmoji in the messaging app on the iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16, and Mac models with an M1 processor or better. Press the emoji face with a plus sign to create your own emoji-looking image. The emoji art style lends itself well to the current capabilities of AI image generation, so it’s fun and clever all around.

The Problem With Genmoji

Although the end result of creating a Genmoji is fun and communicative, it takes too long to get to that point. Part of the appeal of using regular emojis is speed.

Apple and others already acknowledge the need for speed with traditional emoji. There’s a ‘recent’ section of commonly used pictures. As you type out your text, Apple’s keyboard will suggest emoji based on words. Or, once you’ve typed your message, you can tap on the text and convert words to emojis.

Ask yourself: have people come to express themselves through pictures because it’s natural and fast, or has it become second nature because it’s so useful? It doesn’t quite matter which is the egg and which is the chicken in this case. If Apple wants Genmoji to fully catch on, then people need to execute it without thinking twice. That’s not the case right now.

Currently, for Genmoji, you have to remember to consider creating a custom emoji, then you have to think of a prompt, and then wait for what it pulls out of its magic hat. Once the results are shown, you have to scroll through different variations of that prompt, considering if it understood your motivation. If that string of words doesn’t get you what you want, then you have to start the process again.

More often than not, I try to use Genmoji but give up because the conversation is moving along, and the moment has passed. For a custom emoji, GIF, or another meme to land, it needs to be timely—an instinctual rim shot from a drum kit. Genmoji just isn’t that yet.

Fixing Genmoji’s Problem

I wish I could say there was a simple solution that would instantly fix Genmoji, but I don’t think there is. From my use and observing others, I think the more apt approach is a series of subtle tweaks from Apple over time.

For example, I’d love to see Genmoji be able to be created in Image Playground. If I could spend 10 minutes at my leisure creating some Genmoji in a safe space, away from accidental sending, then I could pre-prepare a few and get more familiar with the process and results.

Once technically feasible, I would love to see Apple pre-populate a couple of Genmoji based on the conversation I’m having. This solution implies Apple Intelligence reading and understanding messages—and then guessing an appropriate picture.

Still, as long as it gets close, then it might also serve as a good starting point. Wildly inaccurate Genmoji could also catch on as a viral trend!

Similarly, even if Apple isn’t overly proactive with its Genmoji, pre-populating them based on conversations, then it could at least provide a few prompt suggestions based on the on-screen context once people tap on the icon and signal intent.

If I’m talking about smoking ribs or having a BBQ, then I’d love to see a few unique text prompt ideas like, “A pig on a grill, with smoke coming up,” or “a group of people standing around a grill,” or even “an outdoor table filled with food on plates.” Those are easy to think of at your leisure but at the moment might not be as obvious.

There are a ton of little tweaks that Apple could do to make Genmoji creation faster. While the specifics are less important, I think the thing to keep an eye on is whether Apple puts in the work to make Genmoji faster.

The company has a potentially universally beloved feature blossoming, but it will wilt if some of the roadblocks aren’t removed. Emojis need to be thought of instantly and added to the conversation as quickly as possible.