Samsung has entered into controversy over its “fake” Space Zoom moon shots

Over the weekend, A.J Reddit topic It made waves to push Samsung into a difficult place. It alleges that the company misleads customers by taking “fake” pictures of moon shots using a 100-times zoom in on space.

Samsung introduced Space Zoom with the Galaxy S20 Ultra. Since then, the company has called it a great tool for taking pictures of the moon. Samsung has always asserted that it uses artificial intelligence to improve these 100x digital zoom shots. a SamMobile A report from 2021 described the feature as a gimmick, explaining how Samsung overlays textures obtained from high-resolution images of the Moon onto shots you take using the Space Zoom feature.

The latest Reddit thread also claims the same. From testing by a Reddit user, it appears that Samsung is using AI to add textures like craters and other details to moon shots that would otherwise be blurry. It’s not an extra manipulation to improve the details in the photo you initially clicked. It is a trained neural network that has been fed countless pictures of the moon to be able to add additional information to the moon shots you take with your Samsung phone.

Another case of false advertising?

The post calls Samsung misleading marketing. Redditor links to a file MSPower condition The company was quoted as saying that the 100x zoom feature on the Galaxy S21 Ultra captures multiple frames in a matter of seconds and uses AI to adjust details. Contrary to recent and old claims SamMobile This makes it seem like the Space Zoom feature enhances details already captured by the Galaxy S21 Ultra’s camera.

However, Samsung goes on to explain the following facts about Space Zoom in the MSPower post:

The AI ​​will first start detecting the scene/image in the preview stage by testing it from an AI model trained on hundreds of thousands of images. Once the camera detects the image and identifies it as a specific scene, for example, the moon, it introduces the function of improving detail by reducing blur and noise. The actual image is usually higher quality than the camera preview. This is due to the additional AI-based multi-image processing that occurs while the image is being captured.

So while Samsung has been pretty clear about using AI deep learning to deliver high-quality shots of the moon, Redditors are annoyed at the company for not being open to adding textures and details where there isn’t one. Huawei was also previously accused of not fully disclosing how Moon Mode actually works. A test by a user claimed that the Huawei P30 was actually overlaying pre-existing images of the moon into moon shots.

Samsung has not responded to the latest allegations.