Samsung’s STAR Labs unveils ‘artificial human’ project Neon at CES 2020

After heavily teasing Neon for over a month, Samsung has finally taken off the wraps from Neon. The South Korean company's latest venture into artificial intelligence is an ‘artificial human' that is capable of behaving like a real human and displaying emotions and intelligence.

Rather than just being virtual assistants via speech, Neon generates virtual avatars that look like real humans. Users will interact with them directly and the avatars will react with emotions and converse accordingly. Neon already supports many international languages apart from English including Hindi.

Neon is being developed by Samsung's research division that's called Samsung Technology & Advanced Research (STAR) labs. The project is being led by its President and CEO, Pranav Mistry, who worked on the launch of Samsung's first smartwatch, the Galaxy Gear.

Based on a proprietary platform called Core R3, there's no indication whether Neon will be integrated into any of Samsung's existing products. The R3 stands for Reality, Realtime and Responsive, and the platform claims to ensure the integrity of data with “state-of-the-art protocols.” However, there's hardly any clarity on how the technology works and what it's based on. Along with Core R3, the company also talked about Spectra that will supposedly enhance the immersive experiences on the platform.

The virtual avatars are called Neons and it will serve as the interface for communication rather than traditional voice assistants. We'll have to wait until the company unveils more about the project. Samsung is planning to host a ‘Neonworld 2020' conference later this year where it will shed more light on it that will cover Core R3 and Spectra. Additionally, the beta launch of Neon is also expected this year which we are speculating will happen after the conference.