Over the last few weeks of 2019, Samsung set about teasing a new product known as Neon. The company set up a dedicated Twitter account eeking out various cryptic clues before announcing that it's something about an artificial human project. 

Very little has been revealed at this point, but the countdown timer shows the full reveal will happen during CES 2020. 

The company has also made it clear that Neon is not related to Samsung Bixby and is something new that we've not seen before. It's also a product of STAR Labs (Samsung Technology & Advanced Research Labs) which sounds impressive and futuristic on its own. 

LetsGoDigital has been poking around and discovered some patents related Neon that make things interesting. Samsung Research America has seemingly filed four different trademark applications with the names NEON, NEON Artificial Human, NEON.Life and Core R3.

The description within one of those patents describes the tech as:

"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-modelled versions of human beings using computer animation."

So it seems users will be able to create virtual artificial humans themselves for use in various ways. We're expecting to see much more than just an advanced version of Samsung's AR Emoji.