Samsung accused of using AI to ‘fake’ pictures of the moon

A Reddit post recently spilled all over Twitter alleging Samsung is using artificial intelligence to fake photos of the moon.

The accusation came from a Reddit user named ‘ibreakphotos’ who pointed out that Samsung—with their latest Galaxy phones having 100x ‘space zoom’ (starting with S20 Ultra)—uses artificial intelligence or machine learning built on a neural network of hundreds of thousand images of the moon.

To support the claim, it conducted an experiment—proving that Samsung is adding detail or texture of the moon that are actually non-existent or weren’t technically there.

In the said experiment, he projected a downsized, blurred image of the moon via a display monitor, and took a photo of it from the other end of the room (with the lights off) using an unspecified Galaxy device.

Below is the side-by-side comparison with the reference on the left, and the output photo on the right.

The Reddit user explained that “Samsung is leveraging an AI model to put craters and other details on places which were just a blurry mess,” concluding that ‘moon pictures from Samsung are fake’ and that its ‘marketing is deceptive.’

It also cited a statement from Samsung where it denied that they insert fake moon textures on their photos.

“When taking a photo with the Galaxy S21 cameras and Scene Optimizer is activated, once AI recognizes the object/scene it will work through every step of processing.”

Samsung also adds, “No image overlaying or texture effects are applied when taking a photo, because that would cause similar objects to share the same texture patterns if an object detection were to be confused by the Scene Optimizer.”

Furthermore, the allegation had already reached tech influencers like MKBHD Marques Brownlee retweeting Halide’s statement saying, “This isn’t computational photography — it’s inserting imagery that simply isn’t there.”

Investigating this as we speak

Full video coming soon! 👀 https://t.co/OpeTboA7b5

— Arun Maini (@Mrwhosetheboss) March 12, 2023

Mrwhosetheboss Arun Maini also retweeted the same tweet and said that he is ‘investigating on it as we speak.’

While this may be a big accusation against Samsung, some Reddit users say that the average consumer won’t even care, so long that it’s something people simply enjoy doing—like taking pictures of the moon.

You can see the whole Reddit thread here.