Samsung's Her-like assistant NEON will reportedly ship with the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra

Last year Samsung was teasing NEON,  Samsung’s new “Artificial Human”. Samsung said that NEON can converse and sympathize just like real humans. NEON’s website touts an “artificial human” that “looks and behaves like a real human, with the ability to show emotions and intelligence.” 

Today new leaker Tron revealed that Samsung will finally be shipping the digital assistant exclusively with the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra.

https://twitter.com/cozyplanes/status/1338086569748484096

Neon will reportedly not replace Bixby, meaning your S21 Ultra will probably offer Google Assistant, Bixby and Neon.

Neon has been described however rather more like a digital friend rather than a digital assistant. To make it human-like, Samsung has given it names like Frank, and Natasha so users can call them appropriately instead of saying “Hey Neon”.

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.

We have always dreamed of such virtual beings in science fictions and movies. NEONs will integrate with our world and serve as new links to a better future, a world where‘humans are humans’ and ‘machines are human.

– Pranav Mistry, CEO, Star Labs

Each NEON is powered by Samsung’s proprietary CORE R3 technology platform. R3 in Core R3 stands for Reality, Realtime and Responsive. Samsung has managed to train it in a way that behaves and interact like an actual human. “CORE R3 can also connect to other domain-specific and value-added services.SPECTRA, still in development stage, will complement CORE R3 with the spectrum of Intelligence, Learning, Emotions, and Memory, thus making NEONs fully immersional”.

Samsung has also noted that NEON has “the ability to communicate with human affect, the ability to learn from experiences, and the ability to form new memories”. NEON can also be assigned a certain task or can serve as ” individualized teacher, a personal financial advisor, a healthcare provider, or a concierge. NEON can also be an actor, a spokesperson, or a TV anchor. A NEON can be our friend, collaborator or companion.”

The arrival of the assistant on the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra is somewhat confused by Neon’s creator saying Neon will only be available for B2B use.

To clarify, NEON View is not coming for general public availability. It is first targeted for B2B, as an API that integrates NEON's realtime conversational experiences to their mobile apps and web services. https://t.co/xbL8fp5Yn4

— Mistry (@pranavmistry) November 27, 2020

The issue should be clarified in less than 4 weeks, with the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S21 range on the 14th January 2021.