Samsung Galaxy AI hands-on: Your invisible robot friend

There’s a lot that was cringe-worthy about Samsung Unpacked in San Jose, where the company just unveiled its flagship S24 phone models with new tech it’s calling Galaxy AI.

The focus on “influencers,” who had their own entrance to the event: cringe. The video of MrBeast, who was mostly there to pimp his chocolate bar: mega-cringe. The Samsung executive who introduced top Twitch streamer Pokimane live on stage as “Pokémon”: oof. And then there was all that talk of Galaxy AI “empowering our creativity”, matched to images of central-casting young folks making nonspecific short videos: How you doing, fellow kids?

A year into the incessant AI hype, we’re a bit wiser about its major symptom: marketing babble about new technology that sounds like it was written by ChatGPT. “Put AI in it” could have been the theme of this month’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. 

It’s a shame that Samsung didn’t anticipate this and try to cut through the noise with a different kind of presentation — because having spent some quality time with GalaxyAI, I can confirm it’s actually kind of impressive, in a simple, understated sort of way.

What can AI do for you?

Here, when you dug down below the creativity/influencer pablum, is all that Samsung was claiming was included in Galaxy AI at Unpacked:

• That it can do instant translations, live on the device (meaning it should work even in Airplane Mode, which your phone may be in when you’re on vacation and most need a translation). 

• It will write little summaries of your notes, format them for you, and tidy up your handwriting.

• It will turn your videos into slow-motion after the fact — also live on the device. 

• It will suggest alternate texts that say the thing you want to say in various modes such as “chill” or “Shakespearean.”

• It incorporates an entirely new mode of Google search where all you need to do is draw a circle around a part of any image or paused video. 

In my limited time with all three of the S24 models, I found all but one of all these Galaxy AI functions worked as advertised. That odd one out managed to hallucinate a little, which may be the most AI thing about this whole bundle of tech. 

Otherwise it’s an open question whether any of them count as AI, because … well, because we’re still not agreed on what that term means. You might just as easily call them the latest breakthroughs brought to you by Moore’s Law. But they’re impressive regardless. Let’s take a quick look at each:

Circle to search

Rhymes with orange.
Credit: Chris Taylor / Mashable

Yep, it works as advertised: Draw a simple circle with your finger around a piece of fruit in a picture, for example, get Google’s best guess at which kind of fruit it is, exactly. The only downside is that you have to do a long press on the home button before the feature is activated. That makes sense if you don’t want to accidentally Google something. But do we really do that much accidental circling on our screens?

Translation

“Nine stitches, one in time saves.” –Yoda
Credit: Chris Taylor / Mashable

By putting the phone into Airplane Mode, I was able to confirm that the translation engine is indeed on board the device. Not only that, it’s speedier than most internet-based translation tools.

The languages Galaxy AI offers to translate at launch are Chinese, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish (in Mexican, American, and original flavors), Thai, and Vietnamese. But how to judge the quality of the translations? Luckily, I had a fluent Hindi speaker on call. She suggested trying to translate the kind of English idiom that an AI could easily botch — “A stitch in time saves nine” — and was impressed with the result. (Galaxy AI literally rendered it as “one stitch saves nine in time”: close enough.)

Galaxy AI was less effective with a couple of famous quotes from Hamlet. “To be or not to be …” became “whether or not, that is the question.” And “to die, to sleep, perchance to dream” somehow came out as “in sleep, in sleep, and one for a dream” in Hindi.

And that wasn’t the last Shakespearean test for Galaxy AI.

Alt text

You know what, that’s not … never mind.
Credit: Chris Taylor / Mashable

Here’s one of those hallucination cases where AI can get it so, so wrong.

Galaxy AI can offer alternate suggestions when you type a message in one of several categories: “Remix”, which is just regular phrases in modern English; Shakespearean; Chill; Lyrical; Excited; Formal. They all seem like novelties that will get old fast, but let’s go with it for now.

All in all, it’s probably best not to consult AI when making protest signs.

I tried entering the words “ceasefire now” — not just because it’s the kind of thing many of those young influencers are texting at this very moment, but also because it’s a deceptively complex call to action that could potentially trip an AI up if taken out of context.

And indeed it did. The first “excited” version from Galaxy AI contained the exact opposite sentiment from the original: “YAY! The ceasefire is now over! .” Likewise, the “chill” voice suggested a chilling Orwellian declaration: “time for the peace to stop.” (The second suggestion was this head-scratcher: “Cool bro, can you make it now?”)

At least AI Shakespeare got the concept: “My good fellow, cease the hostilities now,” it offered. “Let us all make peace.” Although its second suggestion was a touch too unilateral: “Be it known, I shall cease hostilities and lay down my arms.”

All in all, it’s probably best not to consult AI when making protest signs.

Slo-mo and Notes

Accurate.
Credit: Chris Taylor / Mashable

Even with all the influencers swanning around Samsung Unpacked, it was hard to get an exciting enough action video at the event that was worth asking Galaxy AI to turn into slo-mo. Suffice to say that it works, even in Airplane Mode, and it’s highly customizable: you can select areas of the video to go slow, and areas that will return to normal speed.

As for Samsung Notes … well, yes, it can provide little executive summaries of any old nonsense that you type or write by hand. ChatGPT and Google Docs can do the same thing, though, so this one doesn’t feel like so much of a breakthrough. Still, the auto-formatting was neat, as was the handwriting rearrangement, and it definitely works offline.

We still have a ton of questions: Will all these features be available for Galaxy AI when it launches on the S23 as well, which is expected sometime this year? But for now, on the S24, well, let’s just say that like a lot of influencers, Galaxy AI is ready for its close-up.

For more revealed at Samsung Upacked, Mashable’s got you covered.