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Summary
You won’t find a Galaxy S24 ad without the “Galaxy AI” buzzword attached to it. Samsung is hyping up Galaxy AI to be a “new era of mobile AI” that will change the way we experience the world. That sounds exciting, but what actually is Galaxy AI, and is it even something worth buying a new phone for?
What is Galaxy AI?
Galaxy AI is a suite of generative AI tools that respond to text prompts,similar to ChatGPT, but can also understand more than just text. This is thanks to something called “multimodal input.”
For starters, Galaxy AI can write messages for you, do live translations, summarize notes, and write messages for you. The multimodal input allows Galaxy AI to help with more than text-based prompts and tasks. “Circle to Search,” for example, enables Google Lens-style searches by simply circling anything on the screen. There are also some AI-infused photo editing features.
Galaxy AI is powered by Google’sGemini Pro and Imagen 2 AI models, which are the next evolution of what wasformerly called “Bard.“Most of the simple Galaxy AI tools are small enough to run locally right on your device, but the larger tasks require an internet connection to run in the Google Cloud.
Galaxy AI Features
Galaxy AI launched on theSamsung Galaxy S24series with six main tools. Some of these features already existed on Samsung devices without the “AI” term applied to them.
Galaxy AI Won’t Be Free Forever
While all of the Galaxy AI features may sound pretty cool, there is a pretty big catch:these features won’t be free forever. Samsung says that Galaxy AI features will be free until the end of 2025, after which you may have to pay a subscription fee to use them. Samsung hasn’t specified which features will be affected or how much they will cost.
The company may be referring to cloud-based AI tools, such as Generative Edit, which require a lot of resources to run. On-device AI tools, such as Live Translation, may be unaffected. None of this has been confirmed, however. We only know that Galaxy AI will be provided in full for free until 2025.
Samsung Phones With Galaxy AI
Galaxy AI launched on the Samsung Galaxy S24 series in Janurary 2024. That includes theGalaxy S24 Ultra, Galaxy S24+, and the Galaxy S24. Circle to Search is not exclusive to Samsung phones—it’s also available on the Google Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro.
Samsung has announced that some of its Galaxy AI featureswill be coming to older models in the months following the Galaxy S24 launch. However, only four features have been confirmed so far: Circle to Search, Live Translate, Photo Assist, and Note Assist. These features will be available for the Galaxy S23 series, Galaxy Z Fold and Flip 5, and the Galaxy Tab S9. Other features may not be supported on older devices.
It was only a matter of time before Samsung got in on the AI train. Thankfully, Galaxy AI is mostly a set of tools that provide genuinely helpful features. Many of the features were already on Samsung devices, just not under the “AI” umbrella.
