‘I would not pay a single dime’ rage Samsung owners slamming new AI phone upgrade and call it ‘useless as hell’
SAMSUNG users are denouncing the company over its suite of AI features, with some deeming the tools “useless.”
Earlier this year, the Korean tech giant unleashed an ambitious suite of productivity and editing tools powered by artificial intelligence.
The tools are free to use until the end of 2025 on supported devices. After that they will be available through a paid subscription model.
Samsung made this clear at the time of launch, but the detail appears to gotten lost in the noise.
However, a promotional video racked up tens of millions of views earlier this month, reinvigorating interest in the AI feature.
The news drove netizens to social media to discuss the tools and their utility.
“I think they’ve massively overestimated how many people are interested in AI,” one Reddit user wrote.
“Yes, AI is the hot buzzword to those in business, but to 90% of people, they couldn’t care less. There’s no way most people are going to pay for it.”
Others knocked the feature’s functionality.
“Overall it’s pretty useless, many things have to be done manually to use the AI and having a subscription model is just a failure,” another Redditor wrote.
Another user refused “a single dime” for such “basic” features.
“C’mon, erasing a reflection in a window or having AI text summarize for you is nothing groundbreaking,” he wrote.
Yet others knocked the tools for being a marketing ploy.
“I think it’s a bluff,” a user proclaimed.
“They are smart enough to realize that the AI emphasis is little more than a marketing tool at this stage and that the AI features are not important to most people once the novelty wears off.”
Many features are intended to assist in content editing.
FlexCam, for instance, tracks the subject of a photo and zooms in or out without human intervention.
Another tool called Photo Assist allows users to move objects, zoom in, reframe, and remaster images “with the help of AI.”
Others aid in communication and transcription.
Note Assist transcribes recordings and sorts them into notes, while two other tools – Interpreter and Live Translate – are intended to translate languages in real time.
Galaxy AI is compatible with devices in the Galaxy S Series, Galaxy Z Series, some tablets, and the Galaxy Book 4 laptop.
Samsung says the laptops also come equipped with two Microsoft AI features, Copilot and Recall. However, Recall faced a wave of controversy that led to its release being indefinitely postponed.
The feature takes screenshots of a device every few seconds to create a searchable library of content including personal photos, passwords, and more.
This quickly sparked security concerns and triggered an outpouring of criticism from data privacy experts.
Some argued the tool was invasive, while others claimed it made it easy for hackers to steal data by storing everything in one place.
Samsung – a brief history
Here's what you need to know...
- Samsung is a major South Korean company made up of many businesses that operate globally
- It’s known locally as a “chaebol”, which means “business conglomerate”
- It was founded by Lee Byung-chul in 1938 as a trading company
- But over several decades, it branched out into food processing, insurance, textiles and retail
- It wasn’t until the late 1960s when Samsung entered the electronics industry – for which it’s best known in the West today
- It also launched businesses in construction and shipbuilding in the 1970s
- Today, Samsung’s most important sources of income are its smartphones and computer chips
- The firm accounts for around a fifth of South Korea’s total exports, and roughly 17% of the country’s GDP
- More than 270,000 staff are employed by Samsung globally
- And in 2023, Samsung Electronics turned over the equivalent of $194 billion in revenue
Recall was originally supposed to debut June 18 on Copilot+ PCs. However, the company told The U.S. Sun it had shifted to a “preview experience” for members of the Windows Insider Program only.
Microsoft claims it will be released to the public following a round of feedback.
A company spokesperson declined to comment on whether the feature posed a security risk.