Microsoft's Emoji8 App Can Evaluate How Well You Imitate Emoji

HIGHLIGHTS

• Emoji8 allows users to compare their own facial expressions to emojis
• It uses Windows Machine Learning (ML) to evaluate your facial expressions
• The app is available for those using Windows 10 October 2018 update

Microsoft has launched a new app called Emoji8 that allows users to compare their own facial expressions to emojis and get evaluated with scores.

"Emoji8 uses Windows Machine Learning (ML) to evaluate your facial expressions while you imitate a random selection of emojis. You can play on the app even when you don't have an Internet connection," Killian McCoy, Program Manager, Microsoft wrote in a blog post on Friday.

McCoy added, "Emoji8 is sample UWP application that uses Windows Machine Learning to evaluate your facial expressions while you imitate a random selection of emojis. The app takes in a video feed from your computer's webcam and evaluates the images with the FER+ Emotion Recognition model version 1.2 locally on your machine. You can tweet a gif summarizing your best scoring pics when you have an internet connection and continue playing even when you don't have one!"

The app is available for those using Windows 10 October 2018 update. It is available for free download on the Microsoft Store. The app's code has also be open sourced, and is available via GitHub. To use the open-source code, developers will need to have Visual Studio 2017 (Version 15.7.4 or newer) installed with the Windows 10 SDK Build 17763.

"This app will give you a great end-to-end example of how you can use the Windows ML APIs to create simple yet magical experiences," McCoy added.

Emoji8 would also allow users to make GIFs summarising the best scoring pictures.