On the heels of news that Apple has overtaken Samsung as the world’s biggest phone maker, Samsung unveiled its new Galaxy S24 smartphone series, with an announcement that centered on a whole suite of new AI-powered features, highlighting the company’s big bet on artificial intelligence.
The new line-up of Samsung Galaxy S24 phones on display at a preview event in San Jose, Calif. on ... [+]
Galaxy AI boasts new translation functions that will allow users to translate conversations in real time across 13 languages during phone calls, text conversations and in-person conversations.
A new “Circle to Search” function allows users to Google any item that appears on their screen in an image or a video simply by circling it with their finger or stylus.
Transcript Assist uses AI to transcribe, summarize and translate recordings while Note Assist helps create AI-generated summaries of notes that allow users to better organize their thoughts.
AI also underpins new photo editing features that allow users to fill in parts of an image background, move subjects around in the frame, erase items and turn, with every AI-altered photo marked with a watermark.
The Samsung S24 Ultra ($1299), S24+ ($999) and S24 ($799) are available for pre-order starting Wednesday and will be on sale starting Jan. 31.
Samsung’s “Galaxy Unpacked” event came with much fanfare Wednesday, and many of the AI features announced at the event were not entirely surprising because of leaks just days ahead of the event. But the event came on the heels of the International Data Corporation’s report that Apple had officially overtaken Samsung as the top phone maker in the world. Samsung is embracing AI, integrating it directly into its devices, in a way that Apple has not. But as Bloomberg reported in October, Apple has upped its investment into AI, and is on track to invest more than $1 billion per year in generative AI products. Other tech companies are similarly looking to integrate AI directly into everyday device usage—Microsoft announced earlier this month that it was including a new AI assistant button on future keyboards to allow easy access to AI functions.
Samsung committed Wednesday to providing seven years worth of updates to the S24 series, following an example set by Google, which committed to seven years of updates on its new Pixel 8 series.