Samsung Unveils Artificial Human Neon, An AI With Human Emotions & Intelligence

Navin Bondade 0 Comments Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Deep Learning, Machine Learning

The long awaiting Samsung’s Technology and Advanced Research Labs (aka STAR Labs) project the ”Neon” has finally unveiled at Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2020 here in Las Vegas.

As per company Neon is not a voice assistant like Siri or Amazon’s Alex, it’s more than that, it’s an artificial human that is essentially a computationally created virtual being that looks and behaves like a real human, think of it as an animated chatbot with the ability to show emotions and intelligence.

From inside and outside Neon completely differs from an AI assistant and it is not know-it-all bots, nor are they androids which will replace the humans, surrogates, or copies of humans. Rather, It’s a human-like avatar that can converse & sympathize just like real humans being.

Neon is a two-dimensional avatar that focuses on enhancing the interactions with people such as customer service, setting up a meeting, booking an event or finding time for a movie or other entertainment option.

STAR lab said that the avatars will “help enhance interactions, such as friendly customer service; a worker that will be able to remember your name if you do yoga a certain amount of times during the week.”

“Over time, Neons will work as TV anchors, spokespeople or movie actors; or they can simply be companions and friends,” a spokesperson for STAR lab said.

“The various avatars of Neons can be used as digital assistants, translators, flight attendants, and whatever else a person or business would want to put a human face too, without having to find a real human.”

Neon has the ability to speak multiple languages from Spanish and Hindi to Japanese and English.

The artificial humans can function as friends, collaborators, and companions and they connect and learn more about people, gaining new skills and evolving over time for a more personalized experience.

According to Neon creator and STAR Labs boss Pranav Mistry: “Neons will integrate with our world and serve as new links to a better future, a world where ‘humans are humans’ and ‘machines are humane.”

”That makes them sound like digital conversation partners, where interactions would approximate real humans. The mission seems to be a softer, more empathetic connection with future virtual assistants.”

To truly animates or to display itself like a human, Neon uses a neural network developed by the lab itself called Core R3 and the SPECTRA engines. This two help it to simulate incredibly lifelike human avatars.

The Core R3 engine has been revealed to bring lifelike reality and realtime responsiveness to Neons while the SPECTRA engine is responsible for providing the Neons with intelligence, learning, emotions, and memory.

Neon describes Core R3 as an advance in the domains of behavioral neural networks, evolutionary generative intelligence, and computational reality. Core R3 was extensively trained on how humans look, behave and interact, and the results of it get display as in the form of animated emotions.

The company said to extensively trained Neon with how humans look, behave and interact we take inspiration from the rhythmic complexities of nature, which help them allot.

The Core R3 stands for Reality Real-time Responsive, it’s a process of generating how these avatars look and move, with the aim of creating a reality that is beyond normal perception.

It combines proprietary technology with neural networks to create these artificial humans, though the starting point was real humans. The latency of Core R3, or how long it takes to respond to queries, is less than a few milliseconds, letting the Neons react and respond in real-time.

Neons are also not similar to deepfake a technology used to produce or alter video content. Neons do not manipulate existing content. Core R3 is able to generate content that never existed before. It creates unique behaviors and interactions of Neons in real-time that never happened before.

According to Samsung’s STAR lab, the Neons have their own emotions and memories, for instance, which would be an astounding and unprecedented feat of computer science. It’s more likely that the creators can simply program them to simulate any kind of emotions and store data.

Neon creator Pranav Mistry said, social networking giant recently banned deepfakes and manipulated media on the platform, this presumably clears Neons’s from the rules Facebook created.

The STAR lab said that while an avatar may be based on the appearance of a real person, the technology behind the Neons is “fundamentally different from deepfake or other facial reanimation techniques

Neons can learn new skills and form memories from experiences. Although they are computationally generated, Neon is built to make friendships, collaborate with humans pleasant, & act like companions.

Talking about Neon, its project head, Pranav Mistry said, Neon is like a new kind of life. There are millions of species on our planet and we hope to add one more. Neons will be our friends, collaborators, and companions, continually learning, evolving, and forming memories from their interactions.

The company plans to bring Neon to the world later in 2020 under beta testing with selected partners in several countries around the world. It said that people will be able to license or subscribe to Neons for expert help asking them for financial advice, for example. It expects them to one day appear in movies and on the news.

“We plan to make Neon available to business partners as well to consumers all around the world,” the company said in an FAQ sheet. “It is too early for us to comment on the business model or pricing for Neon, but we plan to beta launch Neon in the real world with selected partners later this year.”