Samsung has unveiled its latest project at this year’s annual CES in Las Vegas – Project NEON – a digitally generated human avatar that imitates humans visual appearance and emotions.
The Samsung-backed STAR Labs – who developed the NEON – has called it an ‘artificial human,’ who may be used in the workplace in the near future.
‘In the near future, one will be able to license or subscribe to a NEON as a service representative, a financial advisor, a healthcare provider, or a concierge. Over time, NEONs will work as TV anchors, spokespeople, or movie actors; or they can simply be companions and friends,’ STAR Labs said.
The idea for NEON is that they may work in suitable roles, such as an artificial service representative or a concierge. They may also work in entertainment roles, as an actor.
The human avatars are powered by STAR Labs’ Core R3 platform, Reality, Realtime and Responsive, while SPECTRA powers the NEON’s Intelligence, Learning, Emotions and Memory.
But STAR Labs says NEON is not an AI-Assistant and will not provide news, weather or interface the internet. Instead, it will be programmed to speak multiple languages, converse and according to the company – can even pass the Turing test.
NEON is a massive leap in technological advancements for digital avatars, compared to Snapchats Bitmoji, Apple’s Memoji and Nintendo Miis – which are cartoon virtual avatars.
Project NEON intends to release a beta project for a small number of partners by the end of this year. A further announcement on NEON may be released before next years’ CES.
Watch a leaked explainer for Project NEON here.
