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Beijing: Chinese tech giant Xiaomi uploaded an Apple ad to its own website to promote its new feature 'Mimoji', which is similar to Apple's 'Memoji'.
The company embedded an Apple advertisement on its product page for the new Xiaomi Mi CC9 handset, which has a built-in 'Mimoji' feature, on e-commerce sites JD.com and Suning.
On both sites, above the 'Mimoji' name, there is an Apple Music 'Memoji' ad that features an AR version of musical artist Khalid singing a song, news portal PhoneArena reported late on Friday.
According to Xiaomi's public relations general manager, Xu Jieyun, this was all an accident. The company staff "uploaded the wrong content" to the sites, he said on Weibo, news portal MacRumors reported.
This isn't the first time that the Chinese company released a product eerily similar to something that Apple had previously created.
In 2018, Xiaomi launched the equivalent of Apple's Animojis on the Mi 8 smartphone - a device that strongly resembled the iPhone X. Earlier in 2019, it released a device that looked and functioned like Apple AirPods.
A day after Mi CC9's launch, Xiaomi has released a statement in China clarifying that Mimoji has not been copied from Apple. People suggesting otherwise should back up their claims with proof, and continuing to propagate misinformation without adequate proof will prompt the company to “take the next stage of action”.
In June, Xiaomi reportedly stole an artist named Peter Tarka's work to promote company's products on its Spanish website. The images in question were stolen from Tarka's Behance portfolio without any credit or payment. Some of the elements used were actually commissioned pieces for Xiaomi's competitor LG. Xiaomi had also copied MacOS Mojave's signature sand dunes wallpaper in Mi 9. Xiaomi slightly tweaked the wallpaper to shift colours with the time of day.
With inputs from IANS.
