I’m Worried Google Is Going To Ruin One Of My Favorite Android Features With AI

Joe Maring / Android Authority

AI is a big focus for Google right now. Perhaps you’ve noticed. It’s impossible to go on Google Search these days without seeing an “AI Overview” at the top of your search results. Google is repeatedly touting Gemini as the next great AI assistant, and Google’s recent Pixel 9a announcement also came with the news that Google’s Pixel Studio app can now generate AI images of people.

Google wants to sprinkle in AI anywhere it can, and to some extent, I’m OK with this. I want to see Gemini continue to improve and become the Google Assistant replacement Google wants it to be. I’d love to learn more about Google’s ambitious Project Astra, and I’m curious to see how AI will further impact Android and Wear OS.

AI is only going to become a bigger and bigger focus for Google as time goes on, and while that’s fine for some of the company’s products, there’s one Android feature AI shouldn’t have anything to do with: Emoji Kitchen.

Why Emoji Kitchen is so good

Joe Maring / Android Authority

Released for Android in February 2020, Emoji Kitchen is a relatively simple feature, though its execution is darn near perfect. When you select a combination of emojis on Gboard, Emoji Kitchen mashes them together and creates a custom sticker based on whatever you choose. For example, tapping the cat + sunglasses emoji = a cat wearing sunglasses. The turtle + star emoji = a teeny tiny turtle resting in the crook of a star. There are over 100,000 combinations to play with, meaning you can create an emoji for almost anything.

The really impressive part about Emoji Kitchen is its lack of AI. When you create something with Emoji Kitchen, it isn’t being created from scratch in real time. Instead, every mashup has already been designed, mainly by human artists and designers at Google.

This might not seem like a big deal, but in practice, it is. If you’ve ever used any kind of AI image generator, you know how wonky they can be. At best, you’ll get something that looks fine at first glance but, upon closer inspection, has some noticeable imperfections. At worst, you’ll generate an image that looks like a nightmare.

Sometimes, you just need to send a sparkly poop emoji or a monkey shaped like a heart.

Emoji Kitchen doesn’t have this problem, and the more you use the feature, the more apparent it is. Not only are the combinations clean and free of AI hallucinations, but some also have a quirky touch you only get from human artists. For example, some emoji combos feature the iconic “blob” emojis from Android’s past. Others, like combining the turtle emoji with the shrugging person emoji, are done so creatively and humorously in a way AI image generation wishes it could match.

Because of all this, Emoji Kitchen is a feature I use daily in group chats and DMs with friends. Sometimes, you just need to send a sparkly poop emoji or a monkey shaped like a heart. It’s one of the most charming features Google has ever shipped, and it’s something I miss dearly whenever I use an iPhone.

Genmoji shows what happens when AI is involved

Joe Maring / Android Authority

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Emoji Kitchen is what happens when you create a feature like this sans AI. But what happens when you center it entirely around AI? Well, you get Apple’s Genmoji.

Ryan talked about his experience using Genmoji a couple of months ago, and he brings up a fair point. Unlike Emoji Kitchen, Genmoji’s ability to use AI to create virtually any emoji you can think of — so long as you can type a prompt for it — allows for infinitely more possibilities. Where Emoji Kitchen is limited by its database of available artist-made creations, Genmoji is only limited by your own imagination. That’s a considerable advantage, at least on paper. However, in my experience using Genmoji, the quality of its custom-made emoji leaves a lot to be desired.

A couple of quick side-by-side comparisons with Emoji Keyboard show what I’m talking about. On the left is an Emoji Kitchen creation of the sunglasses and cowboy emoji. On the right is Genmoji’s take on the same thing. This is one of the better Genmoji results I’ve gotten, and while it’s okay, it feels clinical to me. The cartoony style of Emoji Kitchen is just more playful and charming than the semi-realistic version Genmoji uses.

Other times, Genmoji fails to understand the assignment. When you combine the heart emoji and hugging emoji in Emoji Kitchen, you get the adorable blob emoji you see above. I asked Genmoji to generate the same thing, using the prompt, “A smiling emoji shaped like a blob holding a heart.” As you can see, it … didn’t generate that. Instead, it gave me a generic smiling emoji with weirdly unsettling eyes.

Then there are the horrifying examples. I tried to recreate Emoji Kitchen’s mashup of the turtle and the shushing face emoji. Emoji Kitchen’s version is utterly adorable, while the Genmoji one looks like a science experiment gone horribly, horribly wrong.

What about combining the ghost and pig emojis? Do it with Emoji Kitchen, and you get a ghost with the cutest pig face and snout. Try the same thing in Genmoji, and you get whatever the hell this is.

Joe Maring / Android Authority

Of course, the upside to Genmoji is that you can create emoji combinations that simply aren’t possible in Emoji Kitchen. But when the end results look like the thing above — what’s supposed to be an orange cat drinking coffee — you start to question why that extra flexibility matters in the first place.

Please, Google, don’t ruin this

Joe Maring / Android Authority

Google hasn’t given any indication that it’s going to AI-ify Emoji Kitchen any time soon, so this concern may all be for naught. However, I also have a hard time believing Google doesn’t want to have its own version of Genmoji to compete with what Apple is doing with the feature.

Maybe Google will create a new and entirely separate AI emoji generator. Maybe it’ll add that as an option to Emoji Kitchen. Maybe it won’t do anything at all. I certainly hope the third option is true, but given the popularity of Genmoji and Google’s constant desire to compete in all aspects of the AI race, I doubt that’s the case.

Not all AI is evil, and there’s absolutely a time and a place for it. But I like my silly little turtle emojis exactly how they are, and I hope AI stays far, far away from them.