A controversy involving Samsung, Galaxy S smartphones and the Moon has been making waves in recent days. A reddit user posted an experiment that proves that the photos of the moon that we see in tests out there are not exactly what the cameras are capturing, but an improved file with the help of artificial intelligence. Samsung made a blog post to explain what’s going on and states (in other words): “That’s right, but you can turn this off.” Will we understand the case?
the case
A Reddit user called u/ibreakphotos/ posted an experiment done with Samsung smartphones, in which he suspects that the final result of a photo taken with the cameras from the Galaxy S20 Ultra onwards, are not properly authentic because they look “too perfect”.
In the publication, the user also mentions a short posted by the famous youtuber tech Marques Browlee (MKBHD) in which he takes a perfect photo of the moon with the 100x zoom of the Galaxy S23 Ultra.
How the test was done
The reddit user said he took an extremely high quality photo of the Moon, reduced its size to a 170×170 pixel frame, put a blur over it through photoshop and enlarged the photo once more to prove that it was all blurry and lacking in definition. He then opened the image in full screen on his cell phone, turned off all the lights in his house, moved to the other side of the room and, zoomed in at almost 60x, took a photo.
The conclusion is that Samsung uses some AI resource to improve the quality of photos and bring details to objects already known as the moon. See below, on the left, the image of the moon that the guy used to take the photo (completely blurred) and on the right, the final photo taken with the Samsung cell phone.
What does Samsung say?
Suspicions of using external resources in photo processing are not that new, things like that have been speculated since 2021. But the post on reddit went viral so much that it practically forced Samsung to comment.
The South Korean company on Wednesday posted a long article explaining how Samsung cameras combine super resolution technologies with AI to reproduce high quality images of the moon. It claims it has been using AI technologies since the Galaxy S10 to “help users capture every epic moment”.
With the feature called Scene Optimizer (optimized scene), through the cell phone cameras, the system recognizes objects and, through this, can provide better results. With the arrival of the Galaxy S21, the Scene Optimizer recognizes the moon as a specific object and applies improvements to the photos.
In addition, Super Resolution technology captures multi-frames and stitches them all together while preserving the finest details to create an improved single file.
Artificial Intelligence also learns from multiple scenarios, positions and phases of the moon to recognize the object more easily.
Another interesting feature is the zoom lock – which reduces the instability of the user holding a smartphone with high zoom, thus allowing a photograph with even more details.
Scene Optimizer can be disabled
If you own a Samsung and feel invaded by having your photos improved thanks to Scene Optimizer, know that it is possible to deactivate this feature. For that, go to Camera Settings > Scene Optimizer > Off.
Questioning the use of AI in things
The use of artificial intelligence resources is a reality and, until further notice, it is there to help us. However, a red light goes on with regard to what is real and what is artificial. After all, do we want a perfect photo of light with enhancements that we know aren’t real? Or do we want reality, however distorted and blurred it may seem? The question remains and you can contribute with your comment.
With information from Samsung
Galaxy S23 Ultra has already passed by
A few days ago, the Galaxy S23 Ultra was with us at Oficina da Net and passed the various performance tests in Speedtest and Roda Liso, in addition to battery tests. You can check it all out in his full review.
