Samsung clears up ‘fake’ moon shots allegation

Samsung drew flak last week for its Galaxy phones’ camera shooting capabilities allegedly ‘faking’ moon shots using AI.

On March 15, Samsung shed light on how its “Super Resolution technology” combined with the “Scene Optimizer” work in order to produce high-quality images of the moon.

The bottom-line here is that Samsung does use clever AI-based enhancement in capturing pictures of the moon.

But instead of just overlaying another image of the moon, it uses the actual shot as its baseline, then that raw scene goes to every step of AI processing.

What are Scene Optimizer and Super Resolution technology?

When the Scene Optimizer feature is enabled, its AI engine recognizes whether you’re taking a photo of the moon or not.

If you do, the Galaxy device will automatically activate the “Zoom Lock” (that combines optical image stabilization and video digital image stabilization) to reduce shakiness.

It also auto-applies optimal brightness to get a clearer view of the moon, that’s why you may notice that the sky around the moon may appear darker.

Then the Super Resolution tech kicks in which takes more than 10 photos to synthesize them in a single image. They call this multi-frame composition—reducing noise and enhance details in the process.

Finally, the Galaxy camera utilizes the AI-based enhancement engine again to “effectively eliminate remaining noise and enhance the image details even further.”

You may read Samsung’s explanation in full via this link.

Is Samsung really ‘faking’ their moon shots?

Apparently, no, Samsung is not faking their moon shots. At least in the context of actually taking a photo of the real moon.

Take note that the moon is tidally locked to our planet, meaning we see the same view of it anywhere on the Earth, all the time.

Thus, having a capable camera system combined with an AI engine—based on a neural network of hundreds of thousand images of the moon—to give your moon picture more life and detail makes the more sense than having a picture of a white blob in the sky.

Of course, Samsung reiterates that users can disable Scene Optimizer if you don’t want AI interfering your photography preferences.

Just head to Camera → Camera Settings → Scene Optimizer → Off.

The brand says that they’re improving Scene Optimizer to “reduce any potential confusion” in taking photos of the actual moon and an image of the moon.

Which means that Galaxy cameras may soon be able to distinguish a mere image of the moon (even an altered one) from the real one and not execute any AI enhancements with it, as you would expect it to be.

Does it matter?

Samsung’s decision to market it as a camera feature instead of a software feature is no doubt, going to be a subject for criticism, especially when AI is involved.

Regardless, the feature’s essence is understandable, in a way. It helps capture ‘epic’ shots of the moon just through your phone, without using any intricate equipment.

With just a few taps, you’re able to capture a high-quality picture of the moon that’s closer to how you actually see it in reality.

Quoting, Arun Maini in his explainer video on the ‘fake’ Samsung moon shots, “The process of creating that image might be less authentic, the end photo is arguably more authentic.”