Here’s what Samsung has to say about the Moon shot controversy

Samsung has been cornered regarding the Moon-gate controversy, which claims that the Moon shots taken from the Galaxy S23 Ultra are fake. It all started after a Redditor ibreakphotos posted a thread on Reddit claiming that Samsung applies way too much AI and AI-based image overlay on Moon shots to make them appear real and detailed.

The South Korean giant, Samsung, has already put forward their explanation on how the Moon shots taken from the Galaxy S23 Ultra aren't totally fake. The company said that “the AI-based scene optimization technology recognizes the Moon as the main object and takes multiple shots for multi-frame composition, after which AI enhances the details of the image quality and colors.” In simple terms, Samsung claims that they do not apply AI-based image overlay over your Moon shots.

Now, Samsung has posted a detailed blog on its website that explains how Samsung Galaxy cameras combine super-resolution technologies with AI technology to produce high-quality images of the moon.Well, frankly, the post is a copy of a last year's post that Samsung released in the Korean language. This time around, it is in English, and more specifically talks about the controversy.

It's the Scene Optimizer and AI detail enhancement engine that does the trick

Samsung says that the Scene Optimizer on the Galaxy S23 Ultra combines several multiple steps, including the Super Resolution feature and multi-frame processing, to combine over 10 images to get rid of the noise and enhance clarity. Moreover, it also combines optical and digital image stabilization to reduce blur.

However, the magic begins when the ‘AI detail enhancement engine' kicks in, which tries to identify whether the Moon is in the image captured using the phone or not. If it detects the Moon, then the AI begins enhancing details. In Samsung's words, “After Multi-frame Processing has taken place, Galaxy camera further harnesses Scene Optimizer’s deep-learning-based AI detail enhancement engine to effectively eliminate remaining noise and enhance the image details even further.”

After reading the post, one thing is clear there is a thin line between whether we are capturing the Moon as we see it or what Samsung thinks the Moon looks like when we take an image using its phone's camera. But one should also note that the Galaxy S23 Ultra isn't creating a Moon shot out of anything. So, Samsung has loosely iterated that their pictures aren’t entirely original, but they aren't completely fake as well.