AI assistants are nothing new to us. Most of us have used Google assistant or Siri to perform basic tasks. Samsung, surprisingly, is a bit late to the party in providing an AI assistant for their electronic devices. Recent reports from the company state that they’re making up for the lost time. The tech giant intends to release its AI assistant NEON at CES. The company calls NEON an “artificially intelligent being” and claims that it may even become something of a “best friend” to people.
Mostly Secretive Marketing
NEON is being developed by Samsung’s STAR Labs, a skunkworks division of the company. NEON’s site doesn’t divulge anything, but marketing for the project had started since December 16th. A lot of marketing seems to be focused on promoting the intelligence of the AI. Additionally, the team has uploaded seven teaser videos that don’t do anything to explain NEON but serve to build hype about the technology.
Thin Devices the Norm Soon
With 5G on the horizon, and edge computing a serious consideration for phone manufacturers, Samsung’s AI “being” might be more than merely a phone assistant. With a fast-enough connection, the assistant could leverage low latency times to send and receive requests in the blink of an eye. Constant, stable connections form the backbone of a futuristic assistant. Furthermore, with natural language processing interfaces expanding at its current rate, these systems may not even need a keyboard for input. While NEON may be a production-ready prototype, it’s more likely to be an exposition on how far Samsung has gotten in their development of AI.
Human-Level AI?
Samsung has teased that NEON will be a “human-level AI,” but it may heavily depend upon access to a working 5G network. The aim of developing the AI is to offer human beings a unique experience with their electronic assistant. If it’s anywhere near as good as the team claims, then Alexa and Siri should probably be worried about NEON.