In June 2018, at the WWDC, Apple unveiled a new way for users to create a customized avatar for themselves that will behave exactly like an Animoji – the animated emojis that came with the iPhone X at launch.
Precisely, memojis were designed to keep up with your head movements and facial expressions, with freckles, glasses, hairstyles all added to the picture.
A year and a month later, as Xiaomi launched its CC9 phone series, we were introduced to the human version of the “Mimoji” that many have concluded to be a clone of Apple’s 3D avatars.
As soon as the Mimoji came to light, a Weibo blogger named ‘Engaged Girl’ posted photos comparing its AR avatars to the Apple version.
Xiaomi was not pleased by the contrast, and immediately called out the blogger to provide evidence of plagiarism. The company stated that they will apologize publicly if the plagiarism claims are proven, but in case the proof cannot be furnished, there could be a defamation lawsuit filed.
Mimoji born before Memoji
Xiaomi’s PR executive Xu Jieyun later issued out a statement detailing how the first generation of the feature in contention, which was actually called Mi Meng (translated as Mimoji in English), was released in May 2018 – a month before Apple’s Memoji came to life.
He clarified that the package name of the APK was also called Mimoji, thus refuting any intentions for the company to clone the Apple product, adding that the ‘functional logic’ between the two products is also different.
Mistaken promo
At the end of the past week, Xiaomi made news again when it accidentally put out Apple’s promo video of the Memojis on its website – to promote the Mimojis. The videos were uploaded to the Mi CC9’s product page on JD.com and Suning, though later withdrawn.
Xu said that it was “just a mistake on behalf of Xiaomi’s staff” where someone uploaded the wrong content.
