Samsung Brings its AI Photo Editing to S22 Series, Flip4, and Fold4 Devices

When it launched the S24, Samsung said it was planning on bringing its AI-powered features to previous releases. It already did so for the S23 family and today it went even further, as all of the Galaxy AI features are available to Galaxy S22 series, Galaxy Z Flip4, and Galaxy Z Fold4 as well as the Tab S8 series users in the U.S.

Coming as part of the One UI 6.1 software update, Galaxy AI includes a host of features that debuted on the S24 series smartphones (and, arguably, make up the majority of their value proposition). It includes Live Translate, Generative Edit, Chat Assist, Transcript Assist, and Circle to Search.

Live Translate enables real-time voice and text translations during phone calls, which Samsung says helps facilitate travel bookings and multilingual conversations. Generative Edit is a photo editing tool that covers a range of tasks using AI, from resizing to filling in the background after removing an object. Chat Assist offers context-aware suggestions and translations for perfecting conversational tones in various contexts while Transcript Assist uses AI and Speech-to-Text technology to transcribe, summarize, and translate voice recordings. Finally, Circle to Search is a Google technology that allows users to learn about what they see on their phone by simply circling it with no need to switch apps.

Just as was the case with Galaxy AI on S24 phones — and later on S23 devices as well as Z Flip5 and Z Fold5 — some Galaxy AI features will require a Samsung account login and active internet connection, as some AI is driven by cloud-based processing.

PetaPixel tested Generative Edit at length during its review of the smartphone earlier this year.

“The S24 Ultra does a good job of erasing subjects that might be distracting and intelligently enhancing the look of your images. It’s even designed to learn from your editing decisions and try to predict what your go-to changes might be, to make more meaningful suggestions,” Chris Niccolls wrote in his review.

However, as much as the AI promises, it didn’t always deliver: “In practice, I found what it was doing to be fairly unreliable,” Niccolls adds.

Part of the expectation with AI is that it will become more intelligent over time with access to a wider base of users and, therefore, more data. Since PetaPixel‘s evaluation of the smartphone was early on, it’s possible that the feature has improved or will improve later this year. That is especially the case when more users gain access to the features with updates like the one today, which will in turn provide more data to Samsung to improve the AI.

Samsung is releasing these features for free to a wide range of devices today, but the company has signaled that might not be the case forever: it only stated that Galaxy AI features will be free until “the end of 2025.”