SwiftKey Puppets

Puppets is an exciting new feature for Microsoft SwiftKey Beta allowing yours to create your own virtual character that mimics your facial expressions and head movements.

Android users can choose between five playful characters: Dinosaur, Panda, Cat, Owl and Dog to record a video with. Puppets can be shared widely and are not limited to any specific messaging app.

SwiftKey worked with the Microsoft Computer Vision and Microsoft Research Asia teams to bring Puppets to life. Unlike other facial tracking software, SwiftKey’s Puppets does not rely on users having a device with an inbuilt depth sensor in their camera and instead uses an RGB camera found in most Android smartphones. This means that more people than ever before with a wide range of smartphones will be able to share messages as a friendly character.

Puppets’ AI technology has been trained using thousands of volunteers from around the world recording expressive videos of changing facial expressions. Using these images and recordings, SwiftKey has trained a Deep Neural Network (DNN) to learn how to identify facial movements and transfer these onto an expressive animal character.

Whilst Puppets is available to all users on Android N and above, those with more recent and powerful smartphones will have the best experience.