It felt like Samsung's Unpacked event last week wasn't as much for introducing the Galaxy S24 series as it was for introducing Galaxy AI. All of the media messaging prior to the event had been hyping up the new artificial intelligence features that the lineup brings to the table. Samsung made no secret of the fact that this was what it wanted people to pay attention to.
Samsung dived straight into Galaxy AI at Unpacked, with the Galaxy S24 series not being formally unveiled until almost half an hour into the event. It goes to show that the company wanted the spotlight to be firmly on Galaxy AI. It wanted viewers' attention, which is typically at its highest at the beginning of the event, to be focused on its new suite of AI features.
Galaxy AI's features include real-time translation during voice calls and messaging, an Interpreter mode for live two-way language translation, and writing style suggestions in Samsung Keyboard. These features are powered by Google's AI models as well as some that Samsung has trained on its own. Other features include Circle to Search with Google, which lets you circle on anything on the screen to look it up online, summarization in native apps like Samsung Notes and Internet, voice-to-text transcribing, wallpaper generation, and more.
There are a whole host of AI features in the camera app as well, that aim to make it easier for you to take better pictures and make edits after the fact. You can fix crooked images without losing other parts of the image, with Galaxy AI automatically generating content to fill the blank parts. It's also easier to erase objects in an image, as well as change the position, size, and angle of objects in the image.
Perhaps one of the most useful Galaxy AI camera features is the ability to transform any video into a slow motion video. Samsung's phones are quite good at taking slow-motion videos but you can achive that effect for any video now. Galaxy AI will generate frames based on the source video to slow down any part of the footage you want to.
These features are available across the entire Galaxy S24 lineup. Imagine you buy a Galaxy S24 Ultra that starts at $1,299 with the idea that since it's the top-of-the-line device, it'll provide you with the best user experience for Galaxy AI. That's true, but how would you feel when you found out that you'll have to pay to use Galaxy AI features after 2025?
The company has confirmed that Galaxy AI features will be available for free until the end of 2025, and that different terms may apply for AI features provided by other parties. What this likely means is that since Google will charge Samsung to use its AI models for the features in Galaxy AI, Samsung's won't be footing that bill on its own, choosing to charge you instead.
What happens beyond 2025 is a mystery right now. Samsung hasn't said what Galaxy AI features you might need to pay for. One would assume that the features developed by Samsung, like the ones for the camera software, will remain available for free. It would likely only be the features relying on AI models from Google and other future partners that you may need to pay for.
To me, it feels like the dumbest idea to charge people to use Galaxy AI, particularly when you want Galaxy AI to be the reason why people should buy your high-end phones. It's counterproductive and won't win the company any fans. It's like the time BMW thought it was a good idea to charge $18 per month for heated seats. The German carmaker eventually had to give up on that genius idea because people certainly weren't thrilled about it.
The usability of these AI features is limited to begin with. They make for great ads to showcase the capabilities of the new devices, but how often do you realistically expect a user in the US needing to use the live translation service to make restaurant reservations in Korean? Or using summarization in Notes when they don't take notes to begin with? Or needing transcription of voice notes?
It remains to be seen what the usability trends for these features look like once the initial novelty wears out. People tend to move on quickly and given that AI features are wants at best instead of must-haves, you can't really make the argument that users' lives won't be better off if they stop using Galaxy AI. One sure fire way to stop people from using Galaxy AI is to charge for it, because then even if they're curious about it, most of them will probably not want to pay a monthly subscription fee for it.
If customers are required to pay for features on a phone that already costs more than a thousand dollars, especially when these new devices don't bring significant hardware upgrades, they can't help but feel like they're getting the short end of the stick.
It also shows a blatant disregard for customers' money. You want them to pay for the cloud processing required to run these AI features, but won't provide them with a charger or earbuds in the box or expandable storage. With everything looking increasingly like a money grab, it won't be a surprise if customers start looking to other Android brands, particularly in price conscious markets in Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa.
There's still a long way to go until 2025 and one would hope that Samsung would figure out a way to not charge people for Galaxy AI. It's going to reflect badly on the company, particularly if Apple comes out with a suite of AI features that it doesn't charge users for. You can bet your bottom dollar many Chinese companies won't either, leaving Samsung in the not-so-enviable position of locking functionality behind a paywall on some of its most expensive devices. Such dumb ideas are best avoided.
