I want to blow your mind with one sentence:

This person doesn’t exist.

Here’s a portrait of a happy young woman (who also doesn’t exist). Great shot for a LinkedIn profile.

Here’s a shot of a guy out for the evening (who, as you guessed, doesn’t exist), looks like it could be at a family gathering or out with a friend.

Here’s a collage of many faces from all around the world.

But are they?….

All of these convincing shots you see were never of anyone real, but produced by nVidia’s AI Neural network technology that can mimic and generate pictures of people that don’t exist.

Check out the website called “This Person Does Not Exist”, which uses artificial intelligence and data sets, to generate photo-realistic portraits of people that ‘truly don’t exist’. This was just the beginning of what was to come to the world. People were mind-blown that this technology existed, but that was just the beginning.

We are quickly entering a world where digitally-rendered people will be used in the media and will look so real, nobody will be able to tell the difference.

Here’s another example. I came across this very photogenic fashion model named Imma who showed up on the Explore feed on my Instagram. She was racking up thousands of followers on her Instagram by the day.

Imma taking a mirror-selfie.

Imma taking a picture with one of her fans.

Imma in the middle between two other fashion models.

As I scrolled several minutes through her Instagram page, I came to the realization…

Imma wasn’t even real!

I was absolutely stunned. Imma’s a 3D model file sitting on someone’s server or computer somewhere out in Japan. She was created by Tokyo-based CG company Modelling Cafe. She’s gotten so popular, she even made it on the cover of CG World.

There were actual advertising agencies “creating” 3D-rendered people in use for advertising and promoting brands on Instagram and other social media outlets.

This year, I stumbled upon a cryptic promotion on Instagram for something called “Samsung Neon”. It gave off vibes of something that uses a ‘digital avatar’ of some sort.

Then on tech sites, I came across a promotional video:

It raised more questions than I had answers to. I was blown away by this. It seems (from face value) that they had taken nVidia’s concept of using data-sets, combined with algorithms and artificial intelligence, to create life-life avatars that can move and talk like real people.

Questions such as:

*Will actors be real in movies? Could dead actors live on forever?

*Will hotels have virtual greeters?

*Will smartphones and smartwatches have a ‘visual digital assistant’?

*Will personal trainers be virtual?

*How will advertising change?

It’s endless!

At this point, anything seems possible with this technology. It seems to have been generated by Samsung’s Core R3 software. The software description states that Core R3 is:

“Downloadable and recorded software for creating, viewing, manipulating, editing, malfunctioning, publishing, and exporting virtual characters; downloadable and recorded software for developing virtual characters; downloadable and recorded software for computer generated characters for use in movies, television, internet and entertainment purposes; computer programs to create, deploy and distribute realistic looking virtual characters via an internet platform ; design and development of computer-modeled versions of human beings using computer animation.”

If this is the case, this may possibly be the best (and scariest) innovations of 2020.

Just reading the description on the software opens up one’s mind to an infinite number of ideas what Samsung Neon AI is going to deliver to the world. Being able to create photorealistic people and exporting them to different digital mediums opens up a whole new endless world of creation.

Neon took the veil off Neon at CES this year. While somewhat rough and uncanny valley in some respects, the level of depth on display here goes far beyond what current voice-driven AI, such as Amazon’s Alexa, can deliver.

It truly is the start of the AI Era.