The processed image of the smartphone after the photo (photo: ibreakphotos/reddit)
The impressive ability of Samsung's high-end phones from the S20 model onwards in the Ultra sub-model is an impressive 30x and 100x zoom capability, what Samsung calls "Space Zoom".
Now, this ability theoretically also allows you to take pictures of the moon with zoom.
But as we all know, photographing the moon with a smartphone and without suitable lenses will often simply give an image of a bright spot or circle on a dark background, and not something that can be called a moon.
Samsung uses image processing to take pictures like this, and turn them into impressive moon pictures.
But are these pictures, in fact, not real?
A Reddit user did his own experiment, and the results basically conclude that it's a fake.
The user ibreakphotos came up with an ingenious test in its simplicity: he took a blurry picture of the moon, displayed it on a screen, and then took a picture of the screen with a Samsung S23 Ultra.
In the original image - there are no details at all, but the processed image of the smartphone suddenly shows details in the face of the moon that were not there before.
And it's not about fixing blurry pixels, or improving the existing one, it's actually about a new moon figure, created "with additions".
In the original picture - there are no details at all (photo: ibreakphotos/reddit)
As mentioned, this discussion is not unique to Samsung's latest model.
In 2021, Input magazine did a big story about the moon photos with the fake details, taken with the S21 Ultra.
Samsung then told the magazine that "no additional layers were created for the image or textural changes were made."
But the company admitted that it uses artificial intelligence to detect a moon in an image, then "offers enhanced detail by reducing blur and noise."
Later, Samsung elaborated on the matter a bit more on its blog, originally in Korean.
The explanation there is accompanied by vague terms but Samsung claims that they use a "detail enhancement function" to "effectively remove noise and maximize details of the moon to give clear and clean images of it".
But what does this mean?
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The results actually lead to the conclusion that it is a fake.
Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra (Photo: Walla! Technology, Yanon Ben Shoshan)
Whether it is fake is no longer a question of yes or no
Samsung did not invent the wheel here.
The widespread use of artificial intelligence to enhance images makes the issue of "is it fake?"
Not for a yes or no question, but a question that sits on a continuum.
It can be said and assumed that what is realistic is only the clean information captured by the camera sensor, without intervention or processing.
But most smartphone cameras today perform computer processing of captured images, and professional photographers also make corrections to images.
The issue then is whether Samsung's moon images are more the optical product of the camera or more the product of computational processing, i.e. a manufactured image rather than a record of a tangible scene.
This is already a semi-philosophical issue, which will only become more complex in the future, and we will probably see more and more "treated" images like Samsung's that will pose a challenge to the question - what is real?
The Verge website, which revealed the story now, has contacted Samsung for a response but it has not yet been received.
We also contacted Samsung's public relations in Israel for a response, and will update when it is received.
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