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Samsung’s AR Emoji are now more customizable but just as creepy

Samsung’s AR Emoji are now more customizable but just as creepy

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Samsung is updating the Galaxy S9’s AR Emoji feature to give users a lot more room to fine-tune the digital avatars so that they actually look like you. Unfortunately, even at their best, it seems like they’ll still resemble a very creepy incarnation of yourself.

Right now, the feature doesn’t allow for a lot of customization. AR Emoji snaps a picture of you, then it automatically generates your avatar and only lets you adjust a few elements, like skin tone and hair color. With the update, you’ll be able to adjust facial features, too, so you can dial in the curvature and thickness of your cheeks, chin, and neck, the shape of your eyes, and the size and position of your earns, lips, and nose.

Now Samsung just needs to completely overhaul the style

While this doesn’t change the overall style of AR Emoji, which currently look like a horrific cross between a Sim and a Mii, it should at least allow people to create ones that better reflect them. And should Samsung ever improve the visuals of AR Emoji such that people actually want to use them, that’ll be an important element to have already figured out.

Apple’s Memoji feature does a much better job of creating a fun style. From the start, it offered a variety of options for face shapes, noses, lips, and so on, allowing people more control over what they look like. But Samsung is actually going a step further in some cases by giving users sliders that let them hone specific elements. That’s something Apple may want to do eventually since its built-in options are just never going to reflect everyone.

Samsung doesn’t say when this AR Emoji update will be available. The company implies that it’s started to roll out, but we haven’t seen it ourselves. Samsung says the update availability “may vary” depending on what country you’re in.