Gboard’s ‘Minis’ now lets you customize new emoji-style sticker packs

Ben Schoon | Oct 30 2018 - 12:57 pm PT

Gboard debuted its “Mini” stickers not too long ago with two different packs of stickers available. Today, Google has revealed a new pack of stickers for the Minis collection, this time with an emoji style design.

Minis on Gboard already deliver sticker packs which are customizable and based on just a single selfie. Originally, two packs were available based on your selfie with “Bold” and “Sweet.” Now, Google is adding the “Emoji” pack which designs a pack of stickers that are designed based off of your selfie, but this time in the style of Android’s stock emojis.

Once the machine learning process creates the pack of stickers, you can then fine tune the details as you like to make the stickers look just like you. For obvious reasons, this set of custom emojis won’t live in the standard Gboard emoji menu, but are rather stickers that attach to messages as an image.

After you take a selfie, emoji Minis use Google’s machine learning algorithms, known as neural networks, to suggest a skin tone, hair style and accessories that you can fine tune. Then, you choose a color for your hair, facial hair or different types of head coverings and eyewear. Add freckles or wrinkles—a little or a lot—if you’d like. Design your Minis so they resemble what you look like in your eyes—or in your mind.

With Mini emojis, redheads (and other hair types) won’t just get a single redheaded emoji, but instead a selection of redheaded options, including redheaded zombies 🧟, redheaded mages 🧙 and redheaded shruggies 🤷.

These new emojis start rolling out to Gboard users on both Android and iOS starting today.