Microsoft has rolled out a free app on Windows that employs ML to deduce the facial expression you are making when mimicking an emoji. Dubbed as Emoji8, the application offers you a score for how well you reproduce the emoji, and it is typically meant to show off the abilities of this level of AI in an accessible manner.
The app gives you an emoji to replicate, examines the video feed from your PC’s webcam, and then tells you your level of correctness. Then, strangely, it offers you the choice of making a GIF to share on Twitter with some of your “extreme facial expressions”. As per Microsoft, Emoji8 is supposed to display how flexible and quick its machine learning ability is. From a user perspective, it is a bit bizarre to display how you 90% matched a smiling emoji to your buddy.
Speaking of emojis, to slash down on the bewilderment regarding character counts on its website, Twitter (the microblogging site) earlier declared that all emojis on the website will now be equal as word count. Due to character counts’ differences among written text and emojis, many emojis comprising the ones with skin tone and gender variations have been counted as more characters, leaving users puzzled. “In support of latest updates to Unicode, Twitter will now consider all emojis equally, comprising those with skin tone and gender modifiers,” the firm claimed via a blog-post.
To offer users the easiness to express themselves more ornately, Twitter earlier augmented the number of characters to 280 from 140 for each tweet. “This update marks noteworthy development for our service since everyone can now advantage from the extra room to convey themselves with additional characters,” the post claimed. In addition to this, Twitter has also launched an update for their “Open Source” library to justify these modifications.