Artificial humans? Samsung Labs' Neon project has a lot of hype to live up to ZDNet

After much social media teasing in the form of mystifying short videos and Tweets hinting towards "artificial humans", Samsung's research subsidiary STAR Labs unveiled its latest project, dubbed Neon, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. And the technology is somewhere between creepy and visionary. Neon produces photo-realistic digital avatars that can respond with human emotions and intelligence in real time. Although they are computer-generated, Neons look, act, and learn like real people – so much, in fact, that the company says on its website that the avatars are "beyond our normal perception to distinguish" from reality. Essentially, Neons look as real as characters in a film, except they interact with us and are virtual creations instead of actors.