Samsung users have been left furious after discovering that their smartphone's'Space Zoom' camera tool uses artificial intelligence (AI) to'enhance' photos. A Reddit user called out the tech giant after they purposefully blurred a photo of the moon, and then took a picture of that photo with their Galaxy S23 Ultra smartphone. The resulting image was much more detailed, showing craters and surface texture that were not visible in the original. User'ibreakphotos' says that this proves Samsung's AI is'doing most of the work' as'the optics aren't capable of resolving the detail that you see'. The company has responded, admitting that it uses AI to recognise when the moon is in shot, but did not rule out the internet sleuth's accusation.

Samsung is hoping to talk its way out of a controversy over its camera processing technology. The company has shared an explanation of the Moon photo detection system it has used since the Galaxy S21. If you have Scene Optimizer turned on, AI detects when you're taking a clear photo of the Moon at 25X zoom or above. The tech lowers the brightness, captures multiple frames (to produce a bright, low-noise picture) and uses a neural network to enhance the detail using a high-resolution reference image for comparison. You can turn Scene Optimizer off. Samsung also notes that this won't work if you either take a snapshot of the obscured Moon or use an image that clearly wasn't taken on Earth.