Your Galaxy S24 has a new time-saving feature aimed at giving you a quick rundown of what an audio file, webpage or note might contain. And it's all courtesy of the new Galaxy AI features that have given artificial intelligence a more prominent role on board Samsung's new flagships.
These summary features aren't just limited to one app. You can tap into the power of AI summary tools in Voice Recorder, the Internet web browser from samsung and the S24's built-in Notes app. And summaries work consistently across all three apps, making it more likely that you'll turn to the feature when you need a little help figuring out the gist of things.
Summaries don't just provide an AI-created cheat sheet for perusing documents — they can also help you track things down. Let's say you take notes of each meeting with your project team, but you can't remember which meeting focused on a specific project. A summary can quickly show in which meetings that project came up.
It all sounds well and good on paper. But just how accurate is the Galaxy AI summary feature? To find out, we put it to the test across the Voice Recorder, Internet and Notes apps, checking each summary to see just how accurate each bullet point was.
Here's how the Galaxy AI summary tool performed when we took a closer look at how exact it was in recapping information.
AI summaries in the Voice Recorder app
The Voice Recorder apps puts the summary feature front and center alongside other Galaxy AI tools like transcription. Select a recording, and you've got a choice between viewing the transcript that the Galaxy AI feature has whipped up or a summary of the recording. The first time you tap the summary view, it will take a little bit for Galaxy AI to work its magic, with the actual time determined by the length of the recording.
You're able to play the recording from the summary review, and tapping different sections of the summary let you jump to that particular section of the recording. The headers of each section also feature time stamps, making it easier to find your place.
The Raven
I recorded myself reading "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe and had the summary feature give me the highlights of this 7 minute, 42 second recording. If you're looking for a plot synopsis, then the summary feature delivers, as it fairly accurately recounted the narrator's encounter with the titular raven and even managed to detect that the narrator "laments the loss of Lenore and questions the existence of God."
That said, don't go looking for the AI to interpret the meaning of the poem as analysis simply isn't in its toolbox. "The speaker seeks solace and answers from the raven, and finds none" is about the closest the AI tool got to providing a textual analysis of the poem. My condolences, American Lit students, your Galaxy S24 can't do your homework for you.
If there's a flaw to the AI-generated summary of this recording, it's that there's a lot of repetition. That probably reflect the nature of the poem it's summarizing, but the different headers inserted throughout the summary transcript include "A Mysterious Midnight Visitor," "A Mysterious Visitor," "Raven's Visit" and "The Raven's Mysterious Visit." those subject headers aren't going to make it easy to jump around to diferent parts of the recording.
Most accurate part of the summary: "A raven mysteriously appears in a person's chamber, uttering only the word 'nevermore.'"
If you had to boil down Edgar Allan Poe's poem into a single sentence, this would probably be the most accurate way of doing it.
What the summary got wrong: "The raven's arrival and departure leaves the person pondering the meaning of its visit."
This may be nitpicking, but Poe clearly writes "And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting / On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door." So I don't know what the AI summary is talking about when it mentions the raven's departure.
Overall grade: B-Plus
The Gettysburg Address
Because I apparently love the sound of my own voice, I also read the Gettysburg Address into the Voice Recorder app. And maybe it's because of the speech's brevity — the recording is a little more than 1.5 minutes long — the summary produced in the app was short, to the point, and featured very little of the repetition we saw in other recording summaries.
Lincoln's mention of a civil war caused the summary tool to correctly deduce this was "A speech given at Civil War battlefield to honor the soldiers who died." Even more impressive was the summary highlighting the emphasis placed on the "actions of the soliders" which "hold greater importance than any words spoken at the ceremony."
Most accurate part of the summary: "Commitment to a new birth of freedom and a government of the people, by the people, for the people."
You can't go wrong summarizing a speech by Lincoln when you include direct quotes from that speech.
What the summary got wrong: Nothing. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is famous of its pithiness and the six bullet points produced by Galaxy AI's summary feature accurate reflect the words that were said.
Grade: A
The Marx Brothers contract scene
Maybe you don't remember the scene from "A Night at the Opera" when Groucho and Chico haggle over a contract for an opera singer. Whether you know it as the "party of the first part" scene or the bit where Chico argues that "there's no such thing as a sanity clause" — or you don't even recognize it all — rest assured that Galaxy AI was able to summarize a recording of my wife and I re-enacting the scene, though it didn't do a particularly thorough job.
Perhaps it was the rapid back-and-forth or perhaps AI just has a hard time with double meanings and plays on words, but the summary got a lot wrong — not just the content of the conversation, but factual parts as well. The summary claims that Groucho and Chico agree on a fee of $1,000 per night — it's actually $10 in the transcript. And when Groucho talks about how someone can live like a prince in New York City on $3 a day — "he won't be able to eat, but he can live like a prince" — the summary thought the characters were talking about someone named Prince.
Don't turn to the summary feature if you need to sum up a lot of comedic exchanges, that's my advice to you.
Most accurate part of the summary: "The contract's first party is referred to as the first party of the first part."
In a summary full of mistakes, the AI at least got this part right.
What the summary got wrong: "Despite the tenor's exceptional talent his manager acknowledges limitations in his vocal range."
When Groucho tells Chico that all of America is waiting to hear the world's greatest tenor sing, Chico replies "Well, he can sing loud, but he can't sing that loud." It's a pretty funny joke, but it sailed right over the Galaxy AI's figurative head if the above passage is anything to go by.
Grade: D
AI summaries of web pages
You can use Galaxy AI to get a summary of a web page — handy if there's a lengthy article you want condensed into bullet points. But there's a key limitation to the feature. You can't use it with Chrome on the Galaxy S24. Instead, you have to turn to Samsung's Internet browser if you're looking for summaries.
As noted in our how-to on getting web page summaries within Samsung's Internet app, the browser features a Galaxy AI icon in its bottom toolbar. Tap it, and you'll have the option of either translating the page or getting a summary of it. The summary appears in a pop-up window that slides up over the web page, which you can dismiss with a downward swipe.
Opinion article on the iPhone 15 Plus
I wrote a story the other day, in which I expressed my appreciation for the iPhone 15 Plus. Don't worry if you missed it, because I had Galaxy AI sum it up for you.
And I have to tell you, the AI did a pretty good job distilling my 1,000-word article into four bullet points. Even the summary's headline — iPhone 15 Plus: A Larger, Longer-Lasting iPhone That's Worth a Second Look — is a pretty good encapsulation of what I wrote.
Most accurate part of the summary: "The iPhone 15 Plus has a larger 6.7-inch display, a longer battery life than the iPhone 15, and a more affordable price tag compared to the iPhone 15 Pro Max."
These are all points I used to make the case for the iPhone 15 Plus, and now I'm beginning to get nervous that I just put myself out of a job.
What the summary got wrong: "Despite its larger size, the iPhone 15 Plus is still comfortable to hold and use with one hand."
The comfortable to hold in one hand assessment was about the iPhone 15, not the iPhone 15 Plus, and I've never been more relieved to flag up an error. Not so smart after all, are you, Galaxy AI?
Grade: B-Plus
Wikipedia article on Martin Scorsese
Wikipedia has quite a detailed entry on my favorite film director, as you'd expect for someone who's been making movies for more than half-a-century. The Galaxy AI summary of the Martin Scorsese Wikipedia is notably less detailed, raising the question of how substantial a good summary needs to be.
There's nothing in the AI summary that's necessary wrong, but if you wanted Galaxy AI to name any noteworthy Martin Scorsese movies or give you anything other than the thinnest of biographical sketches, you're going to be disappointed with the output. I do appreciate that the summary highlighted his film preservation work alongside his directorial output, something the causal browser may not know about.
Most accurate part of the summary: "Scorsese's films often explore themes of Italian-American identity, crime, machismo and Catholic concepts."
Or in the case of "Raging Bull," all of the above.
What the summary got wrong: "He has received numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, BAFTA Awards, Emmy Awards and Golden Globe Awards."
Again, there's nothing incorrect about this bullet point, but it is so vague and detail free as to be almost useless.
Grade: A-Minus
Sports report on a soccer match
I couldn't be in front of a TV set this weekend when Arsenal faced Brentford, so I tasked the Galaxy AI with summarizing a match-report from The Guardian. This should be a pretty straightforward task, but the AI made some critical errors in its summary.
It took two incidents during the match — the match's winning goal and a controversy involving a player appearing to dive — and combined them into one, giving the wrong time for when the winner was scored. That's a kind of mistake that you wouldn't spot if you didn't read the original article closely, which means the AI would have misinformed you about the events of the match.
Most accurate part of the summary: "Arsenal goalkeeper Aaron Ramsdale made a costly error in the first half, allowing Yoane Wissa to equalize for Brentford."
In stark contrast to the bungled bullet point on the winning goal, this description of Brentford's equalizer was a fair summation of the article's description.
What the summary got wrong: "Arsenal secured a crucial 1-0 win over Brentford, maintaining their lead at the top of the Premier League."
First off, the score was 2-1, not 1-0, and the win helped Arsenal jump into first place — there was no lead to maintain. But at least the two team names were accurately summarized.
Grade: C-Minus
AI summaries in the Notes app
As noted in our guide to Galaxy AI features in the Notes app, you can turn to artificial intelligence to not only format and translate notes but summarize them as well. That last part is somewhat straightforward, but with one annoying caveat — I've found you've got to select the text you want summarized — otherwise, the feature will only tackle a section or page of your notes at a time.
Meeting minutes
Since one of the main use cases for needing summaries of your notes will involve meetings, I grabbed the minutes from a recent meeting of my local parks and recreation commission and ran them through the summary tool. The biggest issue I ran into is that there's a limit on just how long notes can run on for if you want to use the summary tool, though Galaxy AI will adjust the length of what it's summarizing to fit that limit.
I don't think I'm being unfair when I say that minutes of government meetings don't make for the liveliest reading, so a summary tool that accurately conveys what happened during a session would be worth its weight in gold.
Most accurate part of the summary: "The main agenda item was the recommendation to approve the Master Plan for De-Pave Park."
This may seem like a small thing, but I was impressed that Galaxy AI was able to pick out the most important part of the Parks & Rec meeting amid all the public comment, commissioner statements and other items on the agenda.
What the summary got wrong: Missing in that summary was the actual result of the approval vote. (It passed unanimously, just in case you were wondering.)
Grade: A-Minus
Trip-planning notes
A little while back, my daughter had the week off of school, so I took off some time to do a few things with her. What those things were going to be was the subject of a brainstorming note I put together, with ideas for local activities, along with the days and hours they were open.
Most accurate part of the summary: "The provided text contains a list of activity ideas for a ski week."
My notes could generously be described as "spartan" — in many cases it was just the names of some places with no other details — so I wasn't expecting much of a summary from Galaxy AI. Instead, I got a fairly thorough summary of all the activities I had listed.
What the summary got wrong: "Additionally there are mentions of a potential trip to Chicago to see the musical 'Chicago.'"
The production of "Chicago" was actually in San Jose, something I noted in the document. And for what it's worth, when I ran the summary a second time to take a back up screen, the AI corrected itself and swapped in the right city.
Grade: A-Minus
Galaxy AI verdict
The summary tools included with Galaxy AI are pretty impressive. There were only a couple instances where the summary was way off the mark, which is certainly concerning when it involves news stories. But for an initial effort that figures to get better the more it's used, the Galaxy AI tools feel pretty well polished.
That said, I wouldn't rely on AI-powered summaries for voice recordings. Differences in how people speaks and the turns of phrase they use introduce too many variables for the AI to produce accurate summaries with any reliability. On the flip side, summarized notes looked very accurate to my eye, with the biggest errors being ones of omission.
Like any tool, AI-powered summaries should be used judiciously and taken with a degree of skepticism. They're perfectly fine as a time-saver for when you need to skim a recording or notes. But if you need 100% accuracy, it's no substitute for your own eyes.
