by - The latest Samsung phones have a “Scene Optimizer” feature on their cameras
- It uses AI to “enhance” the characteristics of certain objects in the shot, such as B. the moon
- One Reddit user dubbed the effect “Fake” and said it was applying a lunar surface texture
Samsung users are furious after discovering their smartphone’s “Space Zoom” camera tool uses artificial intelligence (AI) to “enhance” photos.
A Reddit user called out the tech giant for its “fake” photos after purposely blurring a photo of the moon and then taking a picture of that photo with his Galaxy S23 Ultra smartphone.
The resulting image was much more detailed, showing craters and surface textures not visible in the original.
User ibreakphotos says this proves Samsung’s AI “does most of the work” as “the optics aren’t capable of resolving the details you see”.
The company has responded, admitting that it uses AI to detect when the moon is on fire, but hasn’t ruled out the internet investigator’s accusation.
“Because the moon is tidally locked to earth, it’s very easy to train your model on other moon images and just beat that texture when a moon-like thing is spotted,” they wrote.
They also found that turning off the Scene Optimizer feature on the camera produced a blurry photo of the moon, as desired.
In addition, if two blurred moons appear in the original image, the technology generates and applies a realistic moon texture to only one of them.
The user called the photos of Earth’s natural satellite taken with the Space Zoom lens “fake” as it “adds detail where there is none.”
“While some may think this is your camera’s ability, it actually isn’t,” they wrote.
“And it’s not sharpening, it’s not adding detail from multiple frames, because in this experiment all frames contain the same amount of detail.
“None of the frames have the craters etc because they’re intentionally out of focus, but the camera somehow miraculously knows they’re there.”
They accuse Samsung of being “deceptive” in its marketing, as the South Korean company claims the new lens can “focus on even more distant objects or people.”
Images of the moon – a distant object in low light – are a good test of a camera’s performance and capabilities and are therefore often used as an example in advertising campaigns.
However, since the post went viral, Samsung has responded, admitting that Scene Optimizer “uses advanced AI to recognize objects” and “enhances details.”
“With the launch of the Galaxy S21 series, Scene Optimizer was able to recognize the moon as a specific object during the recording process and applies the feature’s detail enhancement engine to the recording,” it wrote.
“When you take a picture of the moon, your Galaxy device’s camera system uses this deep learning-based AI technology and multi-frame processing to further enhance the details.”
The blog post goes on to say that the AI ​​algorithm has been trained to recognize photos of the moon, meaning it can tell when it’s being shown to the camera lens.
It then automatically adjusts its focus and the brightness of the image to make it as clear as possible before taking multiple pictures.
Finally, the AI ​​detail enhancement engine will “eliminate residual noise and enhance image detail even further.”
However, it does not elaborate on how it does this, leaving open the possibility that it uses its training data to generate a realistic lunar surface texture not present in the original.
ibreakphotos wrote, “There’s a difference between additional processing à la Super-Resolution when combining multiple frames to recover detail that would otherwise be lost, and here where you’ve trained a particular AI model on a series of lunar images to spot the moon and smack the moon texture on it (when there is no detail at all to recover, as in this experiment).’
Other Reddit users are not happy with this. One commented that they were “disappointed” after being impressed with their Samsung’s camera.
Another said they “would have been ok if they had been more transparent”.
This is because the Scene Optimizer adds known lunar features that theoretically should appear in the photo, rather than fabricating false ones.
But others disagree, saying it “makes the whole endeavor of taking a picture of the moon pointless.”
“There are literally thousands of images available to download from the internet at much higher resolution for each phase of the moon,” wrote one Reddit user.
A Samsung spokesman responded to the allegations with: “Samsung strives to deliver superior photo experiences in all conditions.
“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 shots for the multi-frame composition, after which the AI ​​improves the details of the image quality and colors.
“No image overlays will be applied to the photo.
“Users can disable the AI-based Scene Optimizer, which disables automatic detail enhancements for all photos taken.”
The debate over whether AI-enhanced or fully generated imagery can be put in the same class as photography is ongoing.
Last month, an Instagram photographer who gained thousands of followers thanks to his photorealistic portraits admitted he created them using the AI ​​software Midjourney.
He then received backlash from his followers, who felt that he “dishonestly misleads people” and made them think They were photos taken with a camera.
“The creative process is still very much in the hands of the artist or photographer, not the computer,” AI artist Jos Avery told Ars Technica.
He added that while it seems “correct” to disclose when an image has been generated by AI, the photographic industry has not always been open to elements of deception in the past.
said Mr. Avery: “Does that give away people who wear makeup in photos? What about cosmetic surgery?
“Every commercial fashion photo has a heavy dose of photoshopping, including the replacement of prominent bodies on magazine covers.”
