Are AI avatars an impending trend? With Samsung's (somewhat lackluster) demo of Neon's "Artificial Human" at CES, people are beginning to discuss what a future involving these might look like. "It's an odd feeling when your own science fiction catches up with you. A decade away I wrote a short story about a kind of Artificial Intelligence called Verts. The Verts only existed on 2-D screens, but the screens were ubiquitous. They were fake, but CGI had crossed the uncanny valley: They contrived to look more real than their human customers. They were always trying to sell us something — the name derived not from virtual but from advertising — but we didn't mind. They'd conquered the planet by knowing us better than we knew ourselves. It seemed like humanity to create its first self-aware AI in the form of ads. The story made few waves, but I could never let go of the Vert concept. The more marketing became automated, the more ads learned about us, the closer the world of the Verts seemed. They were already out there in the embryonic form of software, lacking only human form with which to make that crucial personal connection. Finally, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas — appropriately, the fakest city on the planet, filled with its most devilishly effective advertising — I came face to face with what I instantly recognized as Verts. They weren't called that, of course. Star Labs, the Samsung-backed company that launched its human-skinned creations to great fanfare Tuesday, prosaically calls them Artificial Humans."