Samsung uses AI for more details in Galaxy 23 Ultra moon photos

At the beginning of February 2023, Samsung released the Galaxy S23 smartphone series and promoted especially the top model Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra with outstanding cameras including a moon shot function that is supposed to take detailed photos of the moon. However, the pictures were apparently not real: the manufacturer is said to have added additional details afterwards using AI.

Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra: Moon photos were not real

Last weekend, a Reddit post went through the roof, in which user ibreakphotos wants to prove that the moon photos of the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra are not real.

To do this, he took a high-resolution image of the moon that he had downloaded from the Internet and scaled it down to a resolution of 170 x 170 pixels, whereupon a blur filter was placed over it in the image editor.

He then opened the image in full screen mode on his monitor and took a snapshot with his Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra. The result was a lot of additional details of the moon that are not even present on the actual image.

For ibreakphotos, it’s clear that Samsung is playing tricks here and using AI to add details to the images in order to deliver impressive photos of the moon.

• Also interesting: Samsung Galaxy S23 disappoints in camera benchmark

This is what Samsung says about the moon photography feature

Samsung has a note in its own CamCyclopedia about how the moon shot feature works. It states:

“[…]the Galaxy Camera applies a Deep Learning-based AI detail enhancement engine (detail enhancement technology) in the final stage to effectively remove noise and maximize the details of the moon to complete a bright and clear image of the moon.”

Apparently, though, this detail enhancement technology is a more detailed texture that is simply overlaid on top of the moon photo.

This isn’t new, though, as Huawei already advertised a moon photo feature years ago with its P30 Pro smartphone, which works in a very similar way to Samsung. And since almost all smartphones now post-process photos and improve them via AI and deep learning, it does not really matter how the pictures were taken. Most smartphone photos today, to whatever degree, do not necessarily reflect the exact reality.