Meet Neon, the world’s first ‘Artificial Human’

What's next for the Artificial Intelligence (AI)? Samsung-backed Star Labs is trying to address this with 'Neon' which is described as the world's first "Artificial Human". The brainchild of Pranav Mistry, President, and CEO of Star Labs, Neon aims to deliver a deeply personalised experience with an AI.

Neon or rather Neons can converse and sympathise like real human beings. Star Labs stresses that Neon shouldn't be confused with regular bots or commercial AIs like Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa which tell users weather updates or play music. The AI also understands Hindi, Spanish and other languages.

At the CES 2020, Star Labs demoed six avatars of Neon based on people from different walks of life including a yoga instructor, a banker, a K-pop star, a news anchor, and a fashion model among others. While Neon avatars may look like these real people, they show their unique personalities and show new expressions, movements, and dialogues. This is quite different from the techniques used in facial recognition.

Watch | Neon, Samsung's AI-powered avatar is world's first 'Artificial Human'

Under the hood, Neon runs on a proprietary technology platform, Core R3, where R3 stands for Reality, Realtime, and Responsiveness.

"It is inspired by the rhythmic complexities of nature and extensively trained with how humans look, behave and interact. CORE R3 can computationally create a lifelike reality that is beyond normal perception to distinguish," said the company in a release.

"CORE R3 can also connect to other domain-specific and value-added services. SPECTRA, still in the development stage, will complement CORE R3 with the spectrum of Intelligence, Learning, Emotions, and Memory, thus making NEONs fully immersional," it added.

On difference with deepfakes, Star Labs says Neon doesn't manipulate an individual scene, video or sequence but it creates unique behaviours and interactions in real-time that may have never happened before. This makes Core R3 one of the few AIs capable of creating original content or realities.

Star Labs plans to introduce a beta version of Neon with select partners later this year. The company will hold a "NeonWorld 2020" conference to provide more details about the new AI.