Rumors of the Galaxy S24 family embracing artificial intelligence have recently been gathering steam, and now Samsung has confirmed it. In a blog post announcing Galaxy AI, the company revealed that artificial intelligence will be “universal intelligence on your phone as you’ve never seen it before.”
Called Samsung Gauss, it will be “in all the places it matters most” with the promise of “barrier-free communication,” “simplified productivity” and “unleashed creativity,” Samsung says. It will function both locally with on-device AI developed by Samsung and with cloud-based AI collaborations with “like-minded industry leaders”.
Buzzwords aside, what does that look like in practice? Here’s what we’re expecting Galaxy AI to offer.
Live AI translations
There’s one feature we know is going to feature for sure, because Samsung specifically mentioned it in the blog post: AI Live Translate Call.
“Audio and text translations will appear in real-time as you speak, making calling someone who speaks another language about as simple as turning on closed captions when you stream a show,” the company explains. This one uses on-device Galaxy AI, Samsung says, to limit the privacy concerns that present themselves when data is uploaded to the cloud.
This sounds very clever, but we’re not sure how practical it is. After all, if you don’t speak the language they’re communicating in, then your reply may still be meaningless to the person you’re speaking to — unless they happen to have an AI-equipped Galaxy phone too.
Generative text assistance
This one is a little bit more vague, occupying a single line in a Samsung press release, but it looks like the company’s AI will be taking a leaf out of ChatGPT’s book with its Gauss Language generative language model.
The release says that it “enhances work efficiency by facilitating tasks such as composing emails, summarizing documents and translating content.”
Composing emails is certainly an interesting proposition — but there are different ways it could be implemented. It could merely be offering recommendations as you type, or it could possibly generate an entire email based on a prompt — for example, writing a complaint letter to an airline based on a few key details.
As for summarizing documents, this is something that Google already does — but it requires Chrome or the Google app. Hopefully, Samsung will offer something a bit more universal.
Camera tricks aplenty
In the same press release, Samsung Gauss Image is mentioned: “a generative image model that can easily generate and edit creative images.” It can make “style changes and additions” and also convert “low-resolution images to high resolution.”
That all sounds promising, and we wouldn’t be surprised if Samsung tried to mimic the Pixel’s Magic Eraser or Best Take features here too.
Finally, Samsung has also teased a few video features coming to 200MP cameras powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3’s AI smarts (i.e.: the S24 Ultra). AI tracking will allow you to keep tabs on a subject in a video at all times, while simultaneously filming both cropped and full-angle shots. It also promises “end-to-end AI Remosaic image capture,” which should offer “richer details and colors.”
AI at what cost?
This all sounds very promising, but there are two big caveats.
The first is that the implementation might not be that good. After all, Samsung went big on its virtual assistant Bixby, and it’s still a bit underwhelming six years after being introduced — a pale imitation of Google Assistant, Alexa and Siri.
Secondly, one rumor suggests that Samsung intends to paywall some of its AI features behind a subscription. That may well prove to be nonsense — why would it give Google a free win with its free-to-use Pixel AI features? — but if not, it could majorly dent its appeal.
We’ll have to see what happens when the Samsung Galaxy S24 family is released. We’ve still got a few months to go, with one report predicting a launch event on January 17, which would likely mean the phone going on sale on February 2, 2024.
