Before this year’s CES started in Las Vegas, there was a real hype about the mysterious avatars from Samsung. The project called “Neon” is supposed to react, act and show feelings on its own. The avatars not only look human, but can be created from existing video material.
But on stage during Samsung’s presentation there was nothing to see of the Neon project. Only during a press conference at the company’s CES booth did Neon’s founder Pranav Mistry reveal the mystery of the avatars. These are virtual figures that can react to the user in virtually real time. The entrepreneur spoke of a latency time of less than 20 milliseconds.
Neon, Samsung’s AI-powered avatar is world’s first ‘Artificial Human’ (Source: Hindustan Times)
However, the company does not want to equate its virtual avatars with developments such as Deepfake, which caused a lot of attention last year. With their “Core-R3” software, they are far away from other face resuscitation techniques and thus create “new realities”.
These realities are particularly reflected in the fact that the virtual humans can show feelings and should not be seen as speech assistants, but as friends and companions. In Las Vegas, however, Samsung emphasized that it is not about replacing people, but about taking a virtual assistant to the next level.
If we’re honest, the presentation of the neon at CES was extremely sobering, and as much potential as there is behind the technology, Samsung is now in debt to show the opportunities digital characters offer.
What do you think? Does a virtual person like Neon have the potential to make a difference? I’m interested in your opinion in the comments!
Post Picture: Samsung
