The emoji -- a modern interpretation of the default yellow man -- will arrive on Pixel phones in beta this week, and all Android Q phones later this year. They include a mix of designs, featuring characters that could conceivably be male or female, with varying hair lengths and androgynous clothing. They've even brought fantasy characters into the fold, with a gender ambiguous Dracula, merperson and variety of zombies.

The addition of any new emoji can present problems across platforms, however -- an emoji on a Google phone can look different on an iPhone, for example. As this is currently an exclusive Google project, the emoji will still be assigned a gender if sent to a non-Google phone. But with the tech industry continually looking at ways to promote user inclusion, it won't be long before the likes of Apple and Samsung catch up.