Originally announced in May 2018, Xiaomi’s Mimoji is an AR-based animated emoji feature that enabled users to see their facial expressions rendered with 3D cartoon animals. With the launch of the CC9 and CC9e earlier this week, Xiaomi added humanoid avatars to the feature, inviting obvious comparisons to Apple’s similarly-named iPhone feature, Memoji, which also started life with 3D animals in 2017 before getting humanoid avatars a year later.
While many are pointing out the obvious similarities between Mimoji and Memoji, right down to their names, Xiaomi is apparently offended about not-so-subtle insinuations that it copied the entire feature from Apple. The company on Wednesday released a statement refuting all allegations of plagiarism and threatened to ‘take appropriate action’ against people who continue to ‘spread misinformation based on unsubstantiated allegations’.
In order to prove that Mimoji is an authentic Xiaomi feature, the company’s General Manager of Public Relations, Xu Jieyun, also pointed out that the Chinese tech firm had launched the Mimoji APK package in May 2018 when Apple’s 3D emoji feature was still called Animoji. The iPhone maker changed the name to Memoji only in June 2018, he contented.
While Xu also claimed that the functionality of the two products is very different, Xiaomi’s implementation has more than just a passing resemblance to Apple’s Memoji, starting with the facial features, expressions and even the color palette. While the concept of 3D animated emojis was first introduced by Samsung – not Apple – it was Apple’s Animojis that got a lot of attention in the global media and made it a popular feature for many smartphone users.
Featured Image Courtesy: Xiaomi (via Weibo)
