The major story at this year’s CES was Neon, a buzzy project from Samsung’s Star Labs, which began previewing its “artificial human” ahead of the Las Vegas event.

While creating your own hype is risky, making such bold claims and then demonstrating your technology in front of a live audience takes a certain type of bravery. CEO Pranav Mistry appeared in front of a queue of digital avatars to unveil Neon, an assistant that is supposed to look, talk, and act like a human in front of a crowd of journalists and showgoers. What is the issue? We were anticipating something more deep after seeing the concept video for Neon, which leaked before the performance, but the Neon humanoid chatbots were a wet squib.

During the demonstration, Mistry interacted with one of the female avatars on a screen, asking her questions and cycling through various facial expressions with the use of an app. The avatars appeared to be mostly lifelike and answered some questions correctly, but the demos were carefully controlled and, even so, a little weird. Only a Neon team member with a microphone could ask questions, and delivery was at best rigid; at worst, it didn’t work at all.

The entire demonstration was ‘live,’ in the sense that it was not a video; Neon salespeople were prompting unique computer-generated responses with their inquiries, but they were pre-rendered in this case. But these weren’t the indistinguishable-from-human AIs that Neon had teased with the actors’ performances. While it’s possible that Neon merely left the lab too soon, there’s no evidence that the spin-off firm can deliver on its goal so far. Indeed, if the Samsung name hadn’t been attached, this could have been dismissed on the first day of demos.

The long-term goal is to create avatars that behave and respond in the same way as real humans do. Unlike Alexa, Neons aren’t meant to be endless encyclopedias of information; instead, they’ll be used for specialized duties – think concierges, tourism guides, or flight crew offering safety instructions – as well as serving as digital companions. Do you want to learn to play the guitar? Maybe your avatar could teach you something.

One advantage Neon has is that Mistry, who has been the CEO of Star Labs (Samsung Technology and Advanced Research Labs) since last October, is in charge of the project. He was also a part in the development of the Ballie robot and Samsung’s Bot Chef, both of which will be showcased at CES 2020, and he was formerly VP of research, having worked on the first Galaxy Gear. The idea for Neon has been bouncing around for two years, but the band only formed six months ago, according to Mistry. “This isn’t even a beta version of the technology; it’s just a sneak peek. “It’s not even close to being ready to go,” he says. Mistry also referred to it as a “four-month young venture” in a tweet during CES.

The avatars we saw in our demo were based on real people’s physique and faces. Neon overlays its own special AI sauce on top of the person’s image to generate “millions” of different animations, gestures, and voice replies.

There are two major parts. The first is Core R3, which stands for ‘Reality Realtime Responsive’ and is the rendering engine for Neon’s avatars’ motions and expressions. All of Neon’s current avatars are based on real individuals, but the Core R3 technology simply requires a base similarity. “The physical traits are based on the likeness of the person, but the behaviors are not necessarily theirs,” Angie Chian, a senior technical writer for Neon, explained. “We can teach them new gestures,” says the narrator. So the way the lady laughs in the video isn’t always how she laughs in real life. I’m not sure what makes her laugh.”

The aim of Neon, on the other hand, is to be able to create avatars entirely from scratch, with no need for flesh – something Mistry believes they will someday be able to do.

Third parties will be able to connect their own intelligence into Neon to offer the “brains” for the system. A hotel, for example, may create a digital concierge by subscribing to the program and then giving Neon’s technology information particular to its own operations. Mistry believes that one day, Neons will be utilized as news anchors for breaking stories. He stresses, though, that “the objective of Neon is not to replace humans.”

The second component, which we haven’t seen yet, is Spectra, a software engine that will operate as a memory for the avatars, allowing them to learn about you through your interactions and get wiser over time. (According to the corporation, interactions are secret, encrypted, and tied to a single avatar.) This is where Neon must deliver on the promised future that we didn’t see at CES, but it’s also where Samsung, and practically every other business outside of Google, Amazon, and Apple, has historically failed.