“No cheating”: criticized for too flattering photos of the Galaxy S23 Ultra, Samsung defends itself

Totally lunar accusations. This is essentially what Samsung claims in its defense the day after a bad buzz thrown around his galaxy s23 ultra. The highest point in South Korea is accused of falsifying his photos taken with high performance zoom, capable of going up to x100 in digital, especially when you want to photograph the Moon.

According to a Reddit user, the Galaxy S23 Ultra would have used and abused artificial intelligence to make its photos of the Moon… too detailed, even too artificial. After multiple tests, he had come to the conclusion that the smartphone could not, despite its performance and power, provide so much detail with such a small camera. And affirm that the Asian manufacturer added layers to amplify and magnify the representation of its famous “Space Zoom” that meant aiming at the Moon like no other.

The scene optimizer in the viewer

“When a user takes a photo of the Moon, the AI-based scene optimization technology recognizes the Moon as the main object and takes multiple photos for multi-image composition,” Samsung told the site. Tom’s guide. “The AI ​​then enhances the quality and color details of the image. It does not apply any image overlays to the photo.”

A rather weak defense for Samsung, which also recalled that users could “disable the AI-based scene optimizer” if they didn’t want the final photo to be tainted by automatic enhancements. In any case, the brand assures it: the AI ​​does not superimpose images on the photos of the Moon to have more details.

In a release, Samsung even wanted to bring more precision to the operating mode of its smartphones. The title of the post also seems very clear about the intentions: how Samsung Galaxy cameras combine super-resolution technologies with AI technology to produce high-quality images of the Moon. He explains that the Image Signal Processing (ISP) algorithm corrects visual noise with the help of AI and this noticeably improves color. With its 200 Mpx sensor and Adaptive Pixel technology, the manufacturer explains that the Galaxy S23 Ultra manages to capture much more detail. But in no case are the photos of the moon replaced by others.

Recognize the moon to improve it

“To take a clear photo of the Moon, Galaxy cameras take advantage of super resolution to synthesize more than 10 images taken at 25x zoom or higher. The image taken at 25x zoom or higher should remove noise and improve quality image quality, clarity and other details,” writes Samsung. It would therefore be the recognition of the Moon as an object by the AI ​​that causes the activation of the scene optimizer, giving brighter and sharper shots. The algorithm was trained to identify the Moon according to different shapes and situations, from the waxing moon to the full moon. HE deep learning (deep learning) does the rest, as does Samsung’s advanced camera technologies.

In a way, Samsung confirms that its 100x super zoom does not do the job on its own for the photo and is supported by the artificial intelligence on board, in particular in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip which brings in particular many improvements in the photo. However, it is interesting to note that Samsung never mentions the allegations made and is content to take photos of the Moon as an example.