Samsung calls it “the first dawn of a new age.” With the introduction of Galaxy AI on the Galaxy S24 Ultra, Samsung hopes to leverage the company’s enormous scale to bring “the world’s first mobile AI, and put AI into people’s pockets for the first time.”
Ahead of the Galaxy S24 launch at Galaxy Unpacked, Samsung UK’s VP and Head Of MX, James Kitto, sat down with me to sketch out the vision of Galaxy AI. “Back in 2007, the smartphone market changed forever. In 2024, the AI phone, and what we’re bringing to market with the Galaxy S24 is going to rewrite those rules once again.”
What’s interesting about calling out 2007 is that it represents an inflexion point in the smartphone world, the move away from keypads and unresponsive screens to touchscreens with on-screen buttons and swipeable keyboards. Will 2024’s introduction of AI into the consumer experience be as fundamental as the move away from PalmOS and Symbian to iOS and Android?
Manufacturers are certainly pitching this moment as a pivot. It’s not just Samsung using AI as a point of differentiation; it is one many manufacturers will likely follow. The days of significant updates to hardware are in the past; the future of hardware will see the spec sheets—at least in raw numbers—look familiar across multiple handsets.
CCS Insight’ Ben Woods highlights why the new Galaxy AI suite is key: “Despite Samsung listing a series of improvements to almost every aspect of its Galaxy S24 family such as the camera, processor, display and more, these days hardware updates do little to move the needle with consumers and reviewers. The big story here is the focus on AI-powered capabilities, which we expect to be the central pillar of Samsung’s marketing for these new devices.”
Samsung is the biggest name so far to commit to this AI Everywhere approach. “We can change the rules,” Kitto excitedly tells me. “We can leverage Samsung’s scale, with over a billion users. We can present the world’s first mobile AI use case to [a massive] market.”
The global market for Samsung’s Galaxy smartphones is massive. Hanah Securities reports the Galaxy S23 family saw sales of over 25 million units in the first eight months of 2023. The other elephant in the room is Apple. Suppose Tim Cook and his team introduce the presumptively named Apple AI at WWDC 2024 in June and match the sales of the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro (put at 47.5 million sales in the first half of 2023, according to research firm Omdia). In that case, you can expect the iPhone 16 Pro to put up a stiff challenge, depending on Apple’s choices over AI implementation.
For now, Samsung is highlighting several key areas where AI makes a notable difference.
Working around generative and inference tools for text, Android Auto can summarise messages to you, and potential replies while you drive; transcript assist improves on existing speech-to-text tools; and note assist will help both generate notes and also summarise them once they are completed.
Several camera tools have been upgraded thanks to Samsung’s AI-powered ProVisual Engine. It enhances the optical zoom of x5 out to x100; low-light and night-time photography is once again improved through the larger sensors and processing tools, from correcting hand-shakes to interpolating where there is a need for more visual information.
Editing images gains generative editing, filling in any gaps when you edit out objects, adding in a generated scene if you move part of a picture out of frame. The AI tools will also make suggestions on edits to improve your pictures,
That’s a long list of just the big-ticket items. What if Kitto had to sell Galaxy AI to an elderly relative and there’s time for just one example?
“In that case, it has to be live translate. I travel a lot. I’ve been sat in the back of taxis trying to explain to a Korean taxi driver where my hotel is, and we’ve resorted to sign language,” Kitto relates. “So I think the ability to have a communication with someone in their language. That speaks volumes, excuse the pun, to the power of AI.”
This raises an important point. AI is a tool for developers; it can’t do something it is not programmed to do. Live translate will work in a one-to-one situation, but you’re not going to be able to watch the magical musical marathon of Italy’s Sanremo and have a Galaxy S24 Ultra offering live translation of the show into English. AI unlocks potential, but it still needs the applications.
While Galaxy AI can handle many tasks locally, some of the more intensive tasks will need to happen in the cloud, with the associated data uploaded for processing. Samsung allows users to opt out of using cloud-based AI services; a toggle in the preferences will limit AI to local services, primarily the inference and prediction engine of Galaxy AI. What you can’t do is switch off AI completely; it’s part of Samsung’s various apps and part of OneUI—Samsung’s flavour of Android.
Looking ahead, what is Kitto eager to see? “I’m fascinated by the consumer demand; the channel partners’ expectations for this launch are as big as I’ve ever seen.”
AI makes a difference, but thanks to science fiction, Artifical Intelligence is a loaded term. Using tools to infer what could come next in a sentence or could be hiding behind a bush in a picture is a far cry from HAL 9000 locking you out of your home. Yet AI is the term we have, so we will have AI everywhere, even if the practical uses are one step removed from the expectations.
When someone wants a phone with AI, Samsung wants to be first in line with the Galaxy S24, Galaxy S24+, and Galaxy S24 Ultra.
