- Kyle Chua
Samsung Responds To "Fake" Galaxy S23 Moon Photos
Samsung has once again found itself at the centre of controversy. This time around, it's about how the electronics giant supposedly faked the moon photos it uses to promote the Space Zoom feature of the Galaxy S series.
The controversy started when Reddit user ibreakphotos alleged that Samsung was adding details not present in the raw scene to its moon photos. The user argued their point by running a test that involved taking an existing photo of the moon from the internet, blurring it, and then taking a zoomed-in photo of it from afar using the Galaxy S23 Ultra. The result showed a photo with more details than what could be seen on the original, suggesting Samsung and its flagship devices' camera software were using an overlaying technique to enhance captured photos.
Samsung denied that it was applying overlaying on photos, and shed more light on how its artificial intelligence-powered camera features worked in a blog post.
"Samsung is committed to delivering best-in-class photo experiences in any condition," the company said in a statement. "When a user takes a photo of the Moon, the AI-based scene optimisation technology recognises the Moon as the main object and takes multiple shots for multi-frame composition, after which AI enhances the details of the image quality and colours."
"It does not apply any image overlaying to the photo. Users can deactivate the AI-based Scene Optimiser, which will disable automatic detail enhancements to the photo taken by the user."
Technically speaking, the moon photos did indeed benefit from some software manipulation. But such technology isn't new in the smartphone world, with a lot of today's releases shipping with beautification features that can mask physical imperfections or marks from subjects' faces or bodies. And Samsung appears to be aware of all this as it continues to give users the option to turn features like Scene Optimiser off if they choose to. The company also said it'll continue to improve the feature "to reduce any potential confusion that may occur between" taking a photo of the real moon and an image of the moon.
Samsung responded to allegations that it faked the moon photos it uses to promote the Space Zoom feature of the Galaxy S series.
The controversy started when a Reddit user claimed that Samsung was adding details not present in the raw scene to its moon photos.
The electronics giant denied that it was applying overlaying on photos, and defended itself by shedding more light on how its artificial intelligence-powered camera features worked.