Generating Doubts

But the invention did not impress everyone.

Ben Wood of the consultancy CCS Insight said he was “underwhelmed” after seeing the NEONS.

He tweeted that, on the booth, they just look like “videos of actors which can be manipulated to do certain actions. I must be missing something.”

Avi Greengart of the consultancy Techsponential said the avatars could be realistic but also “creepy.”

“Leaving aside how impressive the technology is, will NEON be used in ways that people like, just tolerate, or actively hate?” he said.

Jack Gold, an analyst at J. Gold Associates, said Samsung may be ahead of the pack if it can develop avatars that can show emotions and expressions, but also questioned the potential for abuse.

“It has major implications for many fields like customer service, help desk functions, entertainment, and of course could also be used to ‘fake’ a human interacting with a live person for bad or illegal purposes.”