It all started with a Reddit post, where one person likely invested hours in nullifying Samsung’s claim that its high-end Galaxy smartphones can capture high-resolution moon shots. The company likely caught wind of what went down, which is why it has come out with a statement, though it does not appear to have admitted any wrongdoing.
Samsung states that there is no image overlaying when taking a moon shot
With the Korean giant having to explain the recent events, it issued a statement to Tom’s Guide, summarizing what exactly is happening when users attempt to capture a moon shot. According to Samsung, no overlaying has been applied to the image.
“When a user takes a photo of the Moon, 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. It does not apply any image overlaying to the photo.”
Additionally, Samsung states that it has given users a choice to disable the AI-powered Scene Optimizer, which the company says will turn off any enhancements applied to the photo. We recently published a detailed guide on how to deactivate this functionality, so make sure to check that out when you have the time.
For those that still do not have a grasp on what has happened these past few days, allow us to inform you. A Reddit user was able to fake a moon shot by downloading a high-resolution image of the planet, removing the extra details, and capturing the same image from his phone with the lights turned off, with the image still being present on this monitor. According to Redditor, Samsung is using machine learning algorithms that have been trained on hundreds, if not thousands of images of the moon.
This should explain why one can notice so many details of the moon shot after capturing the image. After the latest controversy, we sincerely hope that Samsung invests more resources towards making its smartphone cameras more capable in capturing a moon shoot naturally, rather than misleading the public and employing ‘enhancements’ to those images. Given the size limitation of smartphone sensors, we do not believe that we are remotely close to capturing a high-resolution and natural image of the moon, so in some ways, we may have to embrace these AI-powered techniques.
News Source: Tom’s Guide
