Move over Siri, Alexa: Say hello to world's first 'artificial human' NEON

Pranav Mistry-led Samsung STAR Labs unveils 'artificial' human at Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas

In the world of artificial intelligence (AI), chatbots, and personal assistants like Siri and Alexa, creating an artificial human is perhaps the Next Big Thing that the tech tsars are looking at. While that will take some time, may be years, to come to fruition, electronics major Samsung’s STAR Labs, headed by computer scientist Pranav Mistry, has made some key progress in this endeavour.

At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, the Labs on Tuesday unveiled what it claimed is the world’s first ‘artificial human’ christened NEON.

NEON — which is a portmanteau of Neo (New) and Human — is a computationally created artificial human (humanoid) which looks and behaves like a real human, the Labs said. It has the ability to emote and empathise just like real humans.

NEONs can assist with goal-oriented tasks, while they can also be personalised to assist in tasks that require human touch, said Mistry, who is also the president and chief executive officer at STAR Labs and the brains behind the project.

He, however, made it clear that for the NEON to be ‘productised’ will take some time. The Labs is building key technologies in phases. “We are doing this technology for a long time and we wanted to keep it to ourselves until we thought this is the prime time to give the world a preview,” said Mistry, who is also known for his inventions of SixthSense and Samsung Galaxy Gear, among others.

“Of course, it may take a couple of years, or may be decades for the product to be complete. That is what I am so excited about. It is not about building something which won’t last for two-three years.”

What makes the NEON different, Mistry says, is it’s not like an AI assistant or any other voice assistant. Most act as an interface to the internet to deliver answers or search for the best answer to a query.

In the case of NEON, the company claims, human emotions and expressions are at the core. It is powered by the company’s proprietary CORE R3 technology platform. This also gives visual shape to the visual virtual character.

The artificial human called NEON, which is yet to enter the beta testing phase, will be made to look and behave like a real human

CORE R3 is a blend of various technologies, including behavioural neural network, evolutionary generative intelligence, and computational reality, which bring lifelike reality and real-time responsiveness to NEONs. Unlike the prevalent video manipulation techniques, Mistry says, the platform can give a voice or face to any earlier captured data and create unique behaviour or interaction in less than 20 milliseconds, which is almost similar to humans.

“Our reason behind the NEON is to not deliver a know-it-all kind of robot. People have AI assistants on their phone. What we are creating in the NEON is giving human touch with technology. It is more like a friend to you, a person to talk to,” said Mistry, an alumnus of IIT-Bombay and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

For now, the NEON derives its understanding on subjects from domain-specific knowledge or the intelligence that is provided by third-party value-added services. For example, if ICICI Bank wants NEON as a representative in its bank, it can provide its domain-specific knowledge, while the NEON can be the interface for that.

In the next phase, the Labs is working towards making it more intelligent, using its upcoming technology platform SPECTRA, which is expected to be launched at the NEONWORLD 2020 later in the year.

SPECTRA will be a key enabler to make the NEON smarter, as it can learn from the interactions, memorise those, and present those with the right emotions.

“The focus of CORE R3 platform now is more on the visual aspects of the NEON. But when SPECTRA kicks in, you can see the magic. With this, the intelligence, memory, emotions and connecting to domain-specific knowledge will also come in,” said Mistry.

The company is already speaking to various partners across the world, including India, to undertake beta pilot testing towards the later part of this year. But the market launch of the product will take some time, which, Mistry says, will happen in phases.

“NEON is not market-ready right now. This year, our focus will be to rope in some specific partners across the globe for beta testing, which will help us in terms of improvising it further taking their feedback.”