One of the earliest iterations of a digital avatar actually came in the form of Microsoft’s Clippy, a paperclip-like avatar that was created to help users navigate through Microsoft Office. It was by no means a realistic-looking creation, but that was obviously way back in the day and things have advanced a lot since then.In fact, Samsung has recently announced Neon, which is an upcoming product that apparently offers up realistic-looking digital avatars that will be your “friend”. The company has made such a claim because not surprisingly, many are wondering if Neon could be a new digital assistant or maybe it could be the new face for Bixby.
However, Samsung notes that it is not an AI assistant but simply your “friend”. The description offered by the company reads, “NEON, our first artificial human is here. NEON is a computationally created virtual being that looks and behaves like a real human, with the ability to show emotions and intelligence.”
Unfortunately, despite all the hype surrounding Neon, Samsung is pretty scarce on the details. Even the website notes that the images used are simply “representative” and will not be what Neon actually looks like, so in terms of design and functionality, we have no idea what to expect. We suppose it looks like we have no choice but to wait until we get more details in the future.