Apple and Google battled to have the strangest cartoon pop star.
Sunday night during the Grammys, awards were handed out. But during the commercial breaks, Wiz Khalifa ate Oreos with his son, Serena Williams drove a fancy car, and Ariana Grande’s disembodied head sang “7 rings,” the song that Grammys producer Ken Ehrlich supposedly barred her from performing onstage, in a new commercial for Apple’s Memoji feature.
“Look at my neck!” the cartoon Ariana Grande ordered, despite not having a neck. Similar commercials were made featuring the Grammy-nominated country duo Florida Georgia Line and 2018 Best New Artist nominee Khalid. The real Ariana Grande won best pop vocal album for Sweetener, and wore a Cinderella ball gown to sit on the floor of her own house.
But what exactly is this ad even for? What are these little cartoon heads?
Memoji is an iteration on Animoji, the feature that allowed iPhone X owners to put their own voices into an array of different animal heads (or the poop emoji). These are customized Animojis that are supposed to look like the sender — essentially the same thing as Snapchat’s Bitmoji, except they move. They’re only available on the four latest iPhones — X, XS, XS Max, and XR — because they require Apple’s relatively new TrueDepth camera tech to do accurate face mapping.
