Seems likely/plausible. Most of these tech companies prefer to buy a company and then integrate their tech over developing ideas like this in-house these days.

I can see a lot of use in "I don't really want to record video and worry about how I look today, but this stupid poop can share my exact facial expression".

I don't have an iPhone and don't plan to have an iPhone, but this is going to be a surefire hit feature for Apple, and I expect other platforms to try to emulate it pretty quick.

Also, a friend of mine pointed out how popular it will be among the furry community. :)

It's entertainment. People enjoy entertainment. Why not?

it may be useless to you ... but like, do you know any "regular" people? do you know how popular things like bitmoji are? and snapchat face 'filters'? This is gonna kill ;)

I feel that Apple knows exactly what it's doing with this feature. There is a strong pull with iMessage for 15-25 year olds in schools, the kind of market something like this will go over pretty well with and potentially create more lock in to their message platform. Along with all the other photo apps that will take advantage of this tech. You could even just look at the Animoji as a tech preview for all the other devs.

Poor guy, this "useless" feature is an important milestone in AI