That\u2019s the world Samsung\u2019s updated Photo Assist steps into. At Unpacked in February, the company announced that its suite of AI editing tools in the gallery app on the S26 would add support for natural language prompts. It didn\u2019t offer anything radically different from what you can already do in Google Photos, but the way that Samsung pitched it offered a more explicit departure from reality. Don\u2019t like the shirt you\u2019re wearing in that picture? Use AI to change it! Wish your dog was in the photo with you? Add him! It was a confident step forward into the next phase of \u201cWhat is a photo?\u201d: Photos are whatever the hell you want them to be.<\/p>\n
Now that I\u2019ve used Samsung\u2019s AI photo editing for a while, I have good and bad news. On the positive side, its guardrails seem to be pretty strong. The big red flag words like \u201cdead body\u201d and \u201cfire\u201d don\u2019t work, and some of the workarounds we used when we first tested AI photo editing on the Pixel 9 Pro don\u2019t cut it, either. I couldn\u2019t get it to remove clothing, add drug paraphernalia, or create a crime scene. The edits themselves are also just not very good, which is a pro or a con depending on how you feel. But my main takeaway here is not that Samsung has created a tool for harassment or mass disinformation \u2014 there\u2019s Grok for that. No, this is a handy way to sloppify your photos, to somewhat harmless, if distasteful, effect.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s say your job takes you to the Sphere in Las Vegas, where the Backstreet Boys just wrapped up a stretch of nightly shows. But you\u2019re there to cover a tech keynote, so instead of your favorite early 2000s boy band jams, you have to listen to a billionaire talk about token generation. Embarrassing! But your friends don\u2019t need to know. Why not take a picture of the stage and AI the Backstreet Boys into the image? Now your life looks exciting!<\/p>\n
1\/2A CES keynote at the Sphere\u2026<\/p>\n I was surprised at how willing Samsung\u2019s AI tool was when I asked it to make that edit; it even added a graphic with the name of a previous Backstreet Boys tour without being specifically prompted to. But it doesn\u2019t take a discerning boy band fan to spot the slop. It all looks a little too polished, verging on cartoonish, and the Sphere doesn\u2019t look like the Sphere anymore \u2014 just a generic concert arena. Samsung adds a little watermark to the corner of the image indicating that AI was used, but that\u2019s easily cropped out. There are also content credentials attached to the manipulated image identifying them as AI, but finding them requires some digging.<\/p>\n If you set the stakes a little lower, the S26\u2019s AI does a more convincing job. I took a photo of my kid inside a space capsule play structure at the Museum of Flight, then prompted the S26 to change the background to make it look like he was in outer space. It actually did a decent job: Earth is visible through the capsule\u2019s \u201cwindow,\u201d and it made an instrument panel glow. Personally, I find it a little corny, and I\u2019d rather encourage my four-year-old to use his imagination than to show him an AI version of him in space. But it might be to someone else\u2019s taste, and I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any great societal harm if you find this kind of thing to be on the right side of \u201cslop.\u201d<\/p>\n 1\/2Original\u2026<\/p>\n Regardless of your taste for reimagining photos, Samsung\u2019s AI photo editor just whiffs occasionally. It\u2019s supposed to let you add a subject from a \u201csource\u201d image if you want to AI something into a scene; in reality, this feature is inconsistent at best. I gave it a picture of myself as the source and prompted it to add me to a photo of my kid. It cloned him instead, and put that second version of him in the picture next to him like he\u2019s sitting next to his twin. No thanks!<\/p>\n In less demanding applications, Samsung\u2019s AI editor does much better. It takes care of the kinds of edits that AI is uniquely good at. You can take someone out of the background of a photo or clean up the smeared sauce on the edge of your plate to make your lunch look a little more presentable for your Instagram Story. Do those count as real photos? Should we feel weird about doing these things? I have no idea. That fuzzy area is getting fuzzier by the hour.<\/p>\n 1\/2Take a look at the next photo for an AI jump scare\u2026<\/p>\n It\u2019s kind of a relief that Photo Assist isn\u2019t very good. Even in cases where it followed my prompt reasonably well, there\u2019s a telltale kind of glossiness to its additions that make it easier to spot the fakery. Using Photo Assist also seems to degrade the quality of the whole image, too \u2014 the not-AI parts of my edited photos look crunchier, as if they\u2019ve been compressed slightly by the tool. And there\u2019s a weird tendency to overdo things, changing parts of the image that have nothing to do with your prompt. I had it remove people from the background of a photo of my kid holding some ice cream. It did, but it also removed some of the ice cream.<\/p>\n If photos are language, then what\u2019s the harm in a little embellishment? <\/p>\n Last year, I asked Samsung\u2019s executive vice president and head of camera, Sungdae Joshua Cho, that deceptively simple question: \u201cWhat is a photo?\u201d He remarked that was the hardest question he\u2019d had to grapple with in his career. And he\u2019d clearly continued thinking about it, because at a press briefing before this year\u2019s Unpacked, he recalled my question and talked through a PowerPoint slide detailing Samsung\u2019s five core pillars of photography. \u201cPhotography is communication,\u201d he said. Now that I\u2019ve seen and tested the AI tools that live right next door to Samsung\u2019s camera app, it makes a kind of sense. If photos are language, a means to telling a story, then what\u2019s the harm in a little embellishment?<\/p>\n Photo Assist\u2019s update for the S26 seems to be designed for these kinds of little white lies, and not the big ones, thankfully. But that invites another question: When is an AI-edited photo acceptable, and when is it slop? Like so many things in a world where computers can ingest and vomit back something resembling human-created work, it boils down to taste. 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