Samsung last month announced a mysterious project named NEON which consists of a “virtual person”, but did not explain what it meant. Only at CES 2020 in Las Vegas did the company reveal this idea.
What is Samsung NEON?
Neon, in Samsung’s words is “a computationally created virtual being that looks and behaves like a real human, with the ability to show emotions and intelligence.”
Wait…what?
The company has developed an artificial intelligence that generates 3D models as avatars. They can move, talk, show emotions and act as virtual assistants. This technology was made in the laboratory of Advanced Research Labs (or STAR Labs), which is responsible for experiments inside Samsung, kind of a new department.
Flying to CES tomorrow, and the code is finally working 🙂 Ready to demo CORE R3. It can now autonomously create new expressions, new movements, new dialog (even in Hindi), completely different from the original captured data. pic.twitter.com/EPAJJrLyjd
— Mistry (@pranavmistry) January 5, 2020
Basically, Neon makes video chatbots that look and act like real people. Neons aren’t just know-it-all smart assistants, androids, surrogates or copies of real humans, the company said in an FAQ they shared with the reporters. They can’t tell you the weather or how old Abraham Lincoln was when he died.
NEON developers claim that their technology is different from deepfake and other methods of creating 3D models of people, but so far have not disclosed details. NEON is based on the company’s Core R3 tech, which offers a low latency responses of that is less than a few microseconds to human queries, described as “lifelike” and “indistinguishable” from reality.
