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Samsung's response on 'moonshot' controversy

80 points by achow 4y ago

gehwartzen 4y ago
Seems like a very complicated way of saying replace blurry moon image with high resolution moon image stored in the cloud.
- mattnewton 4y ago
  I think that’s not really how super resolution works, it’s closer to how diffusion models hallucinate details inspired by their training set. I roughly think about it being like you have a lot of high res moons lossy compressed into model weights until they are basically distilled into some abstract sense of “moon image”-ness “indexed” by blurry image patches. Running the network then “unzips” some of that detail over matching low resolution patches. (Using quotes to denote terms I am heavily abusing in this loose analogy) Edit: Importantly though I think this isn’t that different from what you are describing in terms of whether this is potentially misleading customers about the optics on their device, because it is inserting detail not actually captured by the camera sensor.
  - whatshisface 4y ago
    The "it finds an image in its database" understanding of diffusion models doesn't work for SD because it can interpolate between prompts, but since there is only one moon, and it doesn't rotate, and their system doesn't work when the moon is partially obscured, there is really no need to describe it as anything more complex than that.
  - Sporktacular 4y ago
    Super Resolution is only part of the process. It says they then apply "Scene Optimizer’s deep-learning-based AI detail enhancement engine". If the model and its weights contain detail not in the photo being taken, then it's tantamount to having high res images of the moon stored on camera and composited into the image. And if it doesn't then it's not the moon being displayed. Not that it's necessarily bad, but it could be if it fools someone into thinking they're buying superior electro/optics. Enough such that it warranted the line "Samsung continues to improve Scene Optimizer to reduce any potential confusion that may occur between the act of taking a picture of the real moon and an image of the moon".
    - mattnewton 4y ago
      > If the model and its weights contain detail not in the photo being taken, then it's tantamount to having high res images of the moon stored on camera and composited into the image. This is what is happening. I agree it’s tricking people into thinking it’s all optics and that’s kinda bad.
    - blincoln 4y ago
      I think it's actually worse than compositing in a high-resolution moon image. With AI enhancement, the details will look believable but may be completely inaccurate.
- gincent 4y ago
  It's not in the cloud, this is all done on-device. They have a moon detection AI model that they pass the image through, the output of which is then used to set up and then run the moon enhancement model, which fills in the detail from moon images it's been trained upon. These are part of a larger package of super-resolution models and processing pipeline that Samsung licenses from ArcSoft, a computational photography software company that specialises in mobile devices.
  - jaclaz 4y ago
    >... Samsung licenses from ArcSoft ... Interesting, though there seems to be no reference to this kind of function in Arcsoft site: https://www.arcsoft.com/product/single-camera-solutions-on-smartphone.html https://www.arcsoft.com/product/single-camera-solutions-on-s... https://www.arcsoft.com/product/dual-camera-solutions-on-smart-phone.html https://www.arcsoft.com/product/dual-camera-solutions-on-sma... What they mention seems more "logical" enhancements, though the selfie feature of gender and age detection : https://www.arcsoft.com/product/single-camera-solutions-on-smartphone/selfie.html https://www.arcsoft.com/product/single-camera-solutions-on-s... is somehow creepy. Anyway, if they can recognize gender and age and what do you have in your refrigerator ("This offers users a smoother and smarter refrigerator experience.") : https://www.arcsoft.com/product/smart-refrigerator-solutions.html https://www.arcsoft.com/product/smart-refrigerator-solutions... surely they can recognize the moon. Now that they made me think about it, my refrigerator experience, while usually smooth enough, is pretty dumb and repetitive.
    - gincent 4y ago
      On Samsung devices that support this, it's implemented in the file libsuperresolution_raw.arcsoft.so in /system/lib64, if you're curious to have a look at how it works. Some strings from that file, relating to the moon detection and enhancement process: AHDR_SetMoonMask ai_moon ArcSoft_Moon_Detection_2.1.125231001.2 ArcSoft_MoonEnhancement_1.1.12021.257 ARC_SRR_DisableDaytimeMoonScene ARC_SRR_GetMoonSceneType ARC_SRR_SetMoonWeight bMoonMode bMoonProtect MFSR Moon Detect moon count is %d MoonDetect MoonDetect_Init %s_%02d_AIE_Output_ISO_%d_DRC_%0.2f_HDRMoon_%d_%dx%d %s_%02d_CropMoonMask_Idx_%d_%dx%d %s_%02d_DaynightAIMoon_Output_Idx_%d_%dx%d %s_%02d_DaytimeAIMoon_Output_Idx_%d_%dx%d %s_%02d_MoonDetection_Input_%dx%d %s_%02d_MoonHDR_Output_ISO_%d_DRC_%0.2f_HDR_%d_Moon_%d_%dx%d %s_%02d_MoonMask_Idx_%d_%dx%d %s_%02d_ResizedMoonMask_Idx_%d_%dx%d /sdcard/download/arcsr/%s_moon_mask_%dx%d.gray %s/FusionRun_pMoonmask_%dx%d.gray void mfsr_moon_detect(gk_mfsr *)
- ilamont 4y ago
  No no, it's Samsung's amazing deep-learning-based AI detail enhancement engine and OIS and VDIS technologies. /s What I'm wondering is what else is being swapped out.
  - zuminator 4y ago
    What do you mean, what else? I'm genuinely curious what kind of nefariousness you imagine is going on? Like,they're swapping images of Fords with Hyundais? Swapping images of catenaries with nigh indistinguishable parabolas?
    - DougN7 4y ago
      What if they swap some details of an eye or a nose and make one person look just enough like another that an innocent person is convicted?
      - dmix 4y ago
        You think there aren't processes in place for this sort of thing? A due process even. IT experts are brought into cases all the time for stuff like this. This isn't even the standard camera "lying", it's explicitly a special tab for taking super-zoomed in AI optimized photos.
        mrguyorama 4y ago
        And most of the "Experts" brought into courtrooms will argue whatever you pay them to argue. It's an industry. Lawyers aren't picking random AI engineers out of a mom and pop tech company, they have dedicated people who as a job sell their professional title to lawyers to launder a narrative through "an expert"
      - rootusrootus 4y ago
        Given that people still get convicted based on eyewitness testimony that has been repeatedly shown to be extremely inaccurate, I hold out little hope that the justice system will figure out how unreliable modern photography is anytime soon.
- seabass-labrax 4y ago
  If you want a picture of the Moon in cloud, a nice cold frontal weather system should suffice!
bbbobbb 4y ago
They should not be allowed to lie and say their technology "enhances details". This is not a TV show and there are no details to be enhanced.
- whatshisface 4y ago
  It not be out of the ordinary for nobody to understand that what it is doing is impossible except for a few souls in the engineering department, who only agreed to implement it after repeated assurances from someone 8 steps removed from anything to do with communication, that the truth would be clearly communicated. I don't think anyone involved is lying, what happens in big corporations is that each of one hundred people distorts the truth by 1%, for a total distortion of 100%.
  - cma 4y ago
    At some point I don't find it too outrageous that someone said "the moon rarely changes, we can beat Apple at astrophotography by cheating."
- Wistar 4y ago
  "Computer, please show me your best guess."
- scottlawson 4y ago
  Enhancing is the correct term here, at least, in a technical context it is. Image enhancement is defined as a process which aims to improve bad images so that they "look" better. Enhancement aims to make it look better to a human, and often but not always takes into account knowledge of the human visual system to get better looking results. Image restoration is a defined as a process which aims to invert known degradation operations applied to image, such as pepper noise, scratches, or missing fragments of old photographs. It's surprisingly to me how strongly you object to the word enhancement even though image processing textbooks are clear about the definition and have been using the word for decades. I think it shows some ignorance about how cameras and image processing works in modern devices.
- favaq 4y ago
jnsaff2 4y ago
In other news Samsung 990 pro ssd’s are failing in days. No relation.
- heisenbit 4y ago
  You should upgrade to the 999 pro model which will transparently provide data one could imagine being there. There is also talk of a firmware hack unlocking the feature not just for damaged bits but for the whole disk address space. It is believed this feature is still under test and will be commercially available later this year.
thrill 4y ago
"However, the moon will not be properly recognized by the camera and Scene Optimizer technology if it is obscured by clouds, or if the moon object itself is the side that is not visible from the Earth." Do not choose the Samsung for your travel photos of the dark side of the moon.
- lostlogin 4y ago
  I snorted when reading that, how many cell phone images of the back of the moon exist?
  - Sporktacular 4y ago
    None, yet. But a spaceship full of instagrammers is on its way. https://www.space.com/dearmoon-announces-moon-crew-spacex-starship https://www.space.com/dearmoon-announces-moon-crew-spacex-st...
    - at-fates-hands 4y ago
      Reading that article gave me the "Just sending a bunch of random people up in a rocket to go around the moon, what could possibly go wrong?" vibes.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Now I'm imagining an astronaut snapping a photo with their phone while in Lunar orbit, and when they look at the image the Moon's replaced with the broken-image icon from Netscape.
albertopv 4y ago
Things like this feature should be opt-in or basically all pictures made with those smartphone will be legally unusable.
- sizzle 4y ago
  A solution would be to always store the original unenhanced image, like apple does for images in iCloud.
- MikusR 4y ago
  They are opt out. Because people want pictures that look as something. Here are examples of raw pictures from low pixel count sensors and what processing is necessary to get usable picture. https://www.strollswithmydog.com/raw-file-conversion-steps/ https://www.strollswithmydog.com/raw-file-conversion-steps/ https://petapixel.com/2019/07/15/what-does-an-unprocessed-raw-file-look-like/ https://petapixel.com/2019/07/15/what-does-an-unprocessed-ra...
inasio 4y ago
I wonder if Samsung phones do the same "upscaling" on popular landmarks, the Eiffel tower, Grand Canyon, etc. I'd give it better than even odds
- ttapp 4y ago
  Think of the bright side: Billions of crappy photos from the same things all over the world will contain a lot of the same information, and AI (of course!) guided partial image deduplication will save us many data centers.
danpalmer 4y ago
Where does one draw the line between "improving" an image and materially changing an image? If this was not a moon-enhancer, but just a sharpener – which we have used on images for decades – would there be any fuss? Probably not. If this was an AI model trained to do better sharpening than the algorithms we've used historically, would there be any fuss? Maybe, but probably less than with this. Short of literally superimposing fixed images of the moon on top of people's photos, which this is not doing, isn't this just a natural progression of the same sorts of image enhancements we've been doing previously? Perhaps the issue is in the ML optimisation function? An image sharpener is optimising for a supposedly generic change, whereas this model is optimising for a particular subject that carries semantic meaning for humans. Similarly, an enhancer that improves contrast and sharpening on human faces might be fine, but a model that uses your other photos of your friends and family to improve their faces in new photos may not be, because it has the potential to change meaning if it gets it wrong?
- TechBro8615 4y ago
  It begs the question of why we don't apply the same scrutiny to astronomers and cosmologists, who use the same technique on a much larger scale. It's not like anyone "took a picture of a Black Hole," and yet there were hundreds of newspaper headlines suggesting that's exactly what happened. Virtually every "photo" produced of "space" is created through an "imaging" process, which in recent years frequently involves fairly intense processing steps using ML algorithms that are subject to errors and biases which could substantially alter the end result. But the scientific community, and especially the media, largely takes these "images" at face value, despite them having little basis in any "actual" snapshot of reality. I don't really see how what Samsung is doing is any different.
  - its_ethan 4y ago
    lol it looks like we posted similar things at basically the same time - I'd also maybe add that it's noteworthy that this isn't what Huawei was doing where they just overlayed a stock photo of the moon. What Samsung is doing is enhancing the actual data your phone's sensor is getting, which makes it much more like astrophotography processing than just some gimmick/hack.
neilv 4y ago
> Samsung continues to improve Scene Optimizer to reduce any potential confusion that may occur between the act of taking a picture of the real moon and an image of the moon. That bit is a step in the right direction, but I would've preferred the overall tone and message to be one of humility. For example, that they're committing to "honest images" by default, and making some of this more questionable image enhancement to be optional modes/tools that can be enabled consciously. Samsung used to be a low-end brand for computer peripherals. I love the quality and technical innovation of some of their more recent products. I want to see them be one of the most respected and trustworthy brands. Embracing honesty and integrity during this surge of AI methods being shoved into products seems important to that goal.
- nerdponx 4y ago
  I just want a damn on/off switch for the image processing. Is that so much to ask for?
  - PebblesRox 4y ago
    From the webpage: > If users wish to take a picture without the support of AI, users can easily deactivate Scene Optimizer by heading to: Camera → Camera Settings → Scene Optimizer → Off Does that fulfill your requirements or did you mean something different?
    - nerdponx 4y ago
      I missed that, thanks. I wish other phones followed suit with their image processing.
ortusdux 4y ago
If there was a change to the surface of the moon that was visible to the naked eye, would this camera's software filter it out? Because that is where I draw the line. Imagine seeing a large asteroid impact, taking a photo, and getting gaslit.
- mustacheemperor 4y ago
  Early on in the 'controversy' someone on Reddit undertook a similar test, by photoshopping an image of the moon to have a different crater pattern, blurring it, and taking an enhanced photo. Samsung 'enhanced' the moon with the incorrect crater pattern. After seeing that, I was pretty skeptical about the "they're just swapping in a high res png!" claims, regardless of how much they got repeated. This post is more evidence they're not just swapping in a higher res image, but I hunch people will keep repeating it anyway.
  - rolenthedeep 4y ago
    That the enhanced photo contains the wrong data would seem to pretty clearly prove that it is not enhancing the data from the camera sensor and instead using pre-existing photos as the data source.
    - mustacheemperor 4y ago
      To clarify: 1. User took a photo of the "real" moon, and manipulated the craters in photoshop. 2. User photographed a low-resolution image of the manipulated moon image with the Samsung phone. 3. The "enhanced" photo included the manipulated, not-real craters in greater detail. It seems to me that indicates the camera app is utilizing data from the camera sensor to some extent, not just using pre-existing photos, because it "enhanced" craters that do not exist in any pre-existing photos. Why would it indicate the opposite?
- sizzle 4y ago
  A solution would be to always store the original unenhanced image, like apple does for images in iCloud.
function_seven 4y ago
Ten years ago we got fun and exciting errors in scanned documents.[0] I'm looking forward to ten years from now, when I can read about a conviction being overturned because an AI-enabled camera did a similar "enhancement". [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-23588202 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-23588202
- smnrchrds 4y ago
  I knew Ryan Gosling was innocent! Context: https://petapixel.com/2020/08/17/gigapixel-ai-accidentally-added-ryan-goslings-face-to-this-photo/ https://petapixel.com/2020/08/17/gigapixel-ai-accidentally-a... Discussion at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24196650 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24196650
  - kurthr 4y ago
    Yeah, you can't even see the man on the moon yet! To be fair once I get my Bright Side of the Moon Lunar advertising corp set up distributing images on the moon, we'll be in a great position to sue Samsung for failing to reproduce my advertising with full fidelity.
- gabesullice 4y ago
  Something like this actually played a significant role in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse. The prosecution tried to enter some low resolution images into the record and his defense argued it shouldn't be admissable because it had been upscaled. They asserted that by upscaling it, pixels had been added to the image which may not reflect what the camera actually captured. IIRC, the image wasn't very detailed and it was pretty difficult to tell where his rifle was pointed. I don't know whether either side's argument was right, I'm only saying it happened.
  - DontchaKnowit 4y ago
    Yeah it was actually a very interesting argument to listen to in court. Would recommend anyone interested should go listen ti the trial
x0n 4y ago
This is a total non-answer. Nothing but technojargon and babble for baffling the average consumer. They fall short of admitting that yes, they effectively replace images with "enhancements" that are sourced from their ML models in some cases - they prefer to talk about how they merge multiple frames - taken by you - with AI Magic (tm).
- nayuki 4y ago
  I got the exact same interpretation of the article and really dislike what they wrote. They start off by trumpeting their wondrous AI image enhancement technology. They make just a passing reference to the deliberately blurred moon image without explaining how their enhancement technology is wholly inappropriate for "enhancing" an image with no detail to begin with. They continue bragging about AI, object recognition, image stabilization, multi-frame super-resolution and denoising - without addressing the elephant in the room, which is replacing blurry objects with pre-loaded stock imagery. It keeps reiterating that what it's doing is "detail enhancement" (I counted 8 times), not "pasting a stock photo". What an utterly disingenuous press release. It's nothing but a red herring meant to distract and divert. > Samsung continues to improve Scene Optimizer to reduce any potential confusion that may occur between the act of taking a picture of the real moon and an image of the moon. So... they end with a line that basically says "we aim to lie more selectively"?
dang 4y ago
Recent and related: Samsung caught faking zoom photos of the Moon - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35136167 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35136167 - March 2023 (27 comments) Update to the “Samsung space zoom moon shots are fake” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35123389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35123389 - March 2023 (122 comments) Samsung “space zoom” moon shots are fake, and here is the proof - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35107601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35107601 - March 2023 (386 comments)
abeppu 4y ago
> However, the moon will not be properly recognized by the camera and Scene Optimizer technology if it is obscured by clouds, or if the moon object itself is the side that is not visible from the Earth. Great, if you're planning a moon-orbiting mission, you now know not to rely on your Samsung Galaxy to give super-resolution when taking images of the far side. Good to know!
- russdill 4y ago
  There is a list of people that this effects. They probably all have iPhones though.
sizzle 4y ago
A solution would be to always store the original unenhanced image, like apple does for images in iCloud.
newaccount2023 4y ago
[flagged]
yborg 4y ago
After reading a lot of ChatGPT-like marketing cruft, once concludes that they deny nothing here. If you take a photo with the image of the unobscured Moon in it on a Samsung camera, the Moon will be replaced by a generated image of the Moon created in-camera. The details of how this is done aren't really important if you are wondering if the photons reflected from the Moon that hit the sensor are represented in the image file that ultimately is output.
- detrites 4y ago
  Here's a kind of barometer I came up with: imagine taking a photo of the moon, and the phone simply outright replaces the photo with a downloaded pristine astrophotography shot from a cloud server, and shows it to the user instead. How close a phones actual behaviour is to that dystopia, versus the other extreme of simply dumping the raw pixels from the sensor on the screen, that's how messed up that phone is compared to others on the market. Right now, Samsung appears to be way up the bad end of such a scale. At least for the moon... that is, the one situation we know about because someone jumped through hoops to discover it.
  - toxik 4y ago
    Apple does this kind of retouching too as I understand it, but only for bokeh effects and it’s not something they hide.
    - steve_adams_86 4y ago
      I feel like this is signature Apple, and most people who know much about digital photography (especially in phones) is aware that Apple has fairly distinct processing techniques – not necessarily distinct optics. What Samsung did was relatively covert in comparison.
    - Terretta 4y ago
      Apple does "this kind of" retouching, slapping a professionally shot sticker of the thing you phone-camera'd on top of your photograph so it looks pro?
zzzeek 4y ago
samsung: "someone is claiming we are enhancing photos with hardcoded data taken from other photos, let us respond to this claim. We are Enhancing your Photos with Hardcoded Data taken from Other Photos." cant wait til it puts someone elses dog or kid there
sfink 4y ago
I do this too. I meet someone who expresses an opinion relevant to the liberal/conservative divide. Based on which side it better matches, I fill in the rest of their opinions for them. I feel bad for doing it, but it seems to work astonishingly well. Had I not told you, you probably wouldn't have been able to tell. I guess I just meet a lot of people with moon-shaped opinions.
- x3n0ph3n3 4y ago
  You should feel bad for doing it, because it only contributes to the growing divide between people. There's a fairly large cohort of people with opinions that straddle both sides of the aisle from whom you couldn't fill in most of their opinions based on just a single opinion. reddit.com/r/2ALiberals comes to mind.
LorenDB 4y ago
> Samsung continues to improve Scene Optimizer to reduce any potential confusion that may occur between the act of taking a picture of the real moon and an image of the moon. What is this even supposed to mean? Can somebody explain the difference between "a picture of the real moon" and "an image of the moon"? I would take them to mean the same thing, right? Samsung certainly isn't reducing my confusion with that statement. I guess I'll just stick with my Motorola.
- basch 4y ago
  between the act of taking a picture of (the real moon) and [a picture of] an image of the moon.
  - nayuki 4y ago
    What's the difference between photographing the real moon and photographing an image of the moon? You might say that the real moon is infinitely far away and has a straight line of sight. Okay, what about the moon through periscope mirrors? The moon through binocular lenses (in front of the phone camera)? What about the real moon next to the moon reflected off a window? What about the moon projected through a telescope onto a piece of paper? Which one of these "moons" should be subject to image "enhancement" and which should not? You might say the real moon has a certain angular size and brightness... but again, lenses, filters, cloud cover, distances to artificial objects, brightness of artificial objects. I don't think there is any realistic way to distinguish the real moon from a picture of the moon.
    - basch 4y ago
      The difference is they are going to try and detect it somehow and not optimize fake moons.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
1attice 4y ago
This is the most longwinded version of "yes, we did it, and we're not sorry" in recent memory
twhb 4y ago
This page seems designed to direct attention anywhere but the meat of the issue: are the moon details in Samsung photos derived from sensor data alone, or also external photos? To me, the answer is clear: Samsung can’t produce this result unless they also ingest external, high res moon photos. Yet Samsung frames it as “enhancing details”, not “adding details”, clearly implying the details in question were already there in some form.
JEDI-HACKER 4y ago
[dead]

80 points by achow 4y ago

Seems like a very complicated way of saying replace blurry moon image with high resolution moon image stored in the cloud.

mattnewton 4y ago
I think that’s not really how super resolution works, it’s closer to how diffusion models hallucinate details inspired by their training set. I roughly think about it being like you have a lot of high res moons lossy compressed into model weights until they are basically distilled into some abstract sense of “moon image”-ness “indexed” by blurry image patches. Running the network then “unzips” some of that detail over matching low resolution patches. (Using quotes to denote terms I am heavily abusing in this loose analogy) Edit: Importantly though I think this isn’t that different from what you are describing in terms of whether this is potentially misleading customers about the optics on their device, because it is inserting detail not actually captured by the camera sensor.
- whatshisface 4y ago
  The "it finds an image in its database" understanding of diffusion models doesn't work for SD because it can interpolate between prompts, but since there is only one moon, and it doesn't rotate, and their system doesn't work when the moon is partially obscured, there is really no need to describe it as anything more complex than that.
- Sporktacular 4y ago
  Super Resolution is only part of the process. It says they then apply "Scene Optimizer’s deep-learning-based AI detail enhancement engine". If the model and its weights contain detail not in the photo being taken, then it's tantamount to having high res images of the moon stored on camera and composited into the image. And if it doesn't then it's not the moon being displayed. Not that it's necessarily bad, but it could be if it fools someone into thinking they're buying superior electro/optics. Enough such that it warranted the line "Samsung continues to improve Scene Optimizer to reduce any potential confusion that may occur between the act of taking a picture of the real moon and an image of the moon".
  - mattnewton 4y ago
    > If the model and its weights contain detail not in the photo being taken, then it's tantamount to having high res images of the moon stored on camera and composited into the image. This is what is happening. I agree it’s tricking people into thinking it’s all optics and that’s kinda bad.
  - blincoln 4y ago
    I think it's actually worse than compositing in a high-resolution moon image. With AI enhancement, the details will look believable but may be completely inaccurate.
gincent 4y ago
It's not in the cloud, this is all done on-device. They have a moon detection AI model that they pass the image through, the output of which is then used to set up and then run the moon enhancement model, which fills in the detail from moon images it's been trained upon. These are part of a larger package of super-resolution models and processing pipeline that Samsung licenses from ArcSoft, a computational photography software company that specialises in mobile devices.
- jaclaz 4y ago
  >... Samsung licenses from ArcSoft ... Interesting, though there seems to be no reference to this kind of function in Arcsoft site: https://www.arcsoft.com/product/single-camera-solutions-on-smartphone.html https://www.arcsoft.com/product/single-camera-solutions-on-s... https://www.arcsoft.com/product/dual-camera-solutions-on-smart-phone.html https://www.arcsoft.com/product/dual-camera-solutions-on-sma... What they mention seems more "logical" enhancements, though the selfie feature of gender and age detection : https://www.arcsoft.com/product/single-camera-solutions-on-smartphone/selfie.html https://www.arcsoft.com/product/single-camera-solutions-on-s... is somehow creepy. Anyway, if they can recognize gender and age and what do you have in your refrigerator ("This offers users a smoother and smarter refrigerator experience.") : https://www.arcsoft.com/product/smart-refrigerator-solutions.html https://www.arcsoft.com/product/smart-refrigerator-solutions... surely they can recognize the moon. Now that they made me think about it, my refrigerator experience, while usually smooth enough, is pretty dumb and repetitive.
  - gincent 4y ago
    On Samsung devices that support this, it's implemented in the file libsuperresolution_raw.arcsoft.so in /system/lib64, if you're curious to have a look at how it works. Some strings from that file, relating to the moon detection and enhancement process: AHDR_SetMoonMask ai_moon ArcSoft_Moon_Detection_2.1.125231001.2 ArcSoft_MoonEnhancement_1.1.12021.257 ARC_SRR_DisableDaytimeMoonScene ARC_SRR_GetMoonSceneType ARC_SRR_SetMoonWeight bMoonMode bMoonProtect MFSR Moon Detect moon count is %d MoonDetect MoonDetect_Init %s_%02d_AIE_Output_ISO_%d_DRC_%0.2f_HDRMoon_%d_%dx%d %s_%02d_CropMoonMask_Idx_%d_%dx%d %s_%02d_DaynightAIMoon_Output_Idx_%d_%dx%d %s_%02d_DaytimeAIMoon_Output_Idx_%d_%dx%d %s_%02d_MoonDetection_Input_%dx%d %s_%02d_MoonHDR_Output_ISO_%d_DRC_%0.2f_HDR_%d_Moon_%d_%dx%d %s_%02d_MoonMask_Idx_%d_%dx%d %s_%02d_ResizedMoonMask_Idx_%d_%dx%d /sdcard/download/arcsr/%s_moon_mask_%dx%d.gray %s/FusionRun_pMoonmask_%dx%d.gray void mfsr_moon_detect(gk_mfsr *)
ilamont 4y ago
No no, it's Samsung's amazing deep-learning-based AI detail enhancement engine and OIS and VDIS technologies. /s What I'm wondering is what else is being swapped out.
- zuminator 4y ago
  What do you mean, what else? I'm genuinely curious what kind of nefariousness you imagine is going on? Like,they're swapping images of Fords with Hyundais? Swapping images of catenaries with nigh indistinguishable parabolas?
  - DougN7 4y ago
    What if they swap some details of an eye or a nose and make one person look just enough like another that an innocent person is convicted?
    - dmix 4y ago
      You think there aren't processes in place for this sort of thing? A due process even. IT experts are brought into cases all the time for stuff like this. This isn't even the standard camera "lying", it's explicitly a special tab for taking super-zoomed in AI optimized photos.
      - mrguyorama 4y ago
        And most of the "Experts" brought into courtrooms will argue whatever you pay them to argue. It's an industry. Lawyers aren't picking random AI engineers out of a mom and pop tech company, they have dedicated people who as a job sell their professional title to lawyers to launder a narrative through "an expert"
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      Given that people still get convicted based on eyewitness testimony that has been repeatedly shown to be extremely inaccurate, I hold out little hope that the justice system will figure out how unreliable modern photography is anytime soon.
seabass-labrax 4y ago
If you want a picture of the Moon in cloud, a nice cold frontal weather system should suffice!

bbbobbb 4y ago

They should not be allowed to lie and say their technology "enhances details". This is not a TV show and there are no details to be enhanced.

whatshisface 4y ago
It not be out of the ordinary for nobody to understand that what it is doing is impossible except for a few souls in the engineering department, who only agreed to implement it after repeated assurances from someone 8 steps removed from anything to do with communication, that the truth would be clearly communicated. I don't think anyone involved is lying, what happens in big corporations is that each of one hundred people distorts the truth by 1%, for a total distortion of 100%.
- cma 4y ago
  At some point I don't find it too outrageous that someone said "the moon rarely changes, we can beat Apple at astrophotography by cheating."
Wistar 4y ago
"Computer, please show me your best guess."
scottlawson 4y ago
Enhancing is the correct term here, at least, in a technical context it is. Image enhancement is defined as a process which aims to improve bad images so that they "look" better. Enhancement aims to make it look better to a human, and often but not always takes into account knowledge of the human visual system to get better looking results. Image restoration is a defined as a process which aims to invert known degradation operations applied to image, such as pepper noise, scratches, or missing fragments of old photographs. It's surprisingly to me how strongly you object to the word enhancement even though image processing textbooks are clear about the definition and have been using the word for decades. I think it shows some ignorance about how cameras and image processing works in modern devices.
favaq 4y ago

jnsaff2 4y ago

In other news Samsung 990 pro ssd’s are failing in days. No relation.

heisenbit 4y ago
You should upgrade to the 999 pro model which will transparently provide data one could imagine being there. There is also talk of a firmware hack unlocking the feature not just for damaged bits but for the whole disk address space. It is believed this feature is still under test and will be commercially available later this year.

thrill 4y ago

"However, the moon will not be properly recognized by the camera and Scene Optimizer technology if it is obscured by clouds, or if the moon object itself is the side that is not visible from the Earth." Do not choose the Samsung for your travel photos of the dark side of the moon.

lostlogin 4y ago
I snorted when reading that, how many cell phone images of the back of the moon exist?
- Sporktacular 4y ago
  None, yet. But a spaceship full of instagrammers is on its way. https://www.space.com/dearmoon-announces-moon-crew-spacex-starship https://www.space.com/dearmoon-announces-moon-crew-spacex-st...
  - at-fates-hands 4y ago
    Reading that article gave me the "Just sending a bunch of random people up in a rocket to go around the moon, what could possibly go wrong?" vibes.
yamtaddle 4y ago
Now I'm imagining an astronaut snapping a photo with their phone while in Lunar orbit, and when they look at the image the Moon's replaced with the broken-image icon from Netscape.

albertopv 4y ago

Things like this feature should be opt-in or basically all pictures made with those smartphone will be legally unusable.

sizzle 4y ago
A solution would be to always store the original unenhanced image, like apple does for images in iCloud.
MikusR 4y ago
They are opt out. Because people want pictures that look as something. Here are examples of raw pictures from low pixel count sensors and what processing is necessary to get usable picture. https://www.strollswithmydog.com/raw-file-conversion-steps/ https://www.strollswithmydog.com/raw-file-conversion-steps/ https://petapixel.com/2019/07/15/what-does-an-unprocessed-raw-file-look-like/ https://petapixel.com/2019/07/15/what-does-an-unprocessed-ra...

inasio 4y ago

I wonder if Samsung phones do the same "upscaling" on popular landmarks, the Eiffel tower, Grand Canyon, etc. I'd give it better than even odds

ttapp 4y ago
Think of the bright side: Billions of crappy photos from the same things all over the world will contain a lot of the same information, and AI (of course!) guided partial image deduplication will save us many data centers.

danpalmer 4y ago

Where does one draw the line between "improving" an image and materially changing an image? If this was not a moon-enhancer, but just a sharpener – which we have used on images for decades – would there be any fuss? Probably not. If this was an AI model trained to do better sharpening than the algorithms we've used historically, would there be any fuss? Maybe, but probably less than with this. Short of literally superimposing fixed images of the moon on top of people's photos, which this is not doing, isn't this just a natural progression of the same sorts of image enhancements we've been doing previously? Perhaps the issue is in the ML optimisation function? An image sharpener is optimising for a supposedly generic change, whereas this model is optimising for a particular subject that carries semantic meaning for humans. Similarly, an enhancer that improves contrast and sharpening on human faces might be fine, but a model that uses your other photos of your friends and family to improve their faces in new photos may not be, because it has the potential to change meaning if it gets it wrong?

TechBro8615 4y ago
It begs the question of why we don't apply the same scrutiny to astronomers and cosmologists, who use the same technique on a much larger scale. It's not like anyone "took a picture of a Black Hole," and yet there were hundreds of newspaper headlines suggesting that's exactly what happened. Virtually every "photo" produced of "space" is created through an "imaging" process, which in recent years frequently involves fairly intense processing steps using ML algorithms that are subject to errors and biases which could substantially alter the end result. But the scientific community, and especially the media, largely takes these "images" at face value, despite them having little basis in any "actual" snapshot of reality. I don't really see how what Samsung is doing is any different.
- its_ethan 4y ago
  lol it looks like we posted similar things at basically the same time - I'd also maybe add that it's noteworthy that this isn't what Huawei was doing where they just overlayed a stock photo of the moon. What Samsung is doing is enhancing the actual data your phone's sensor is getting, which makes it much more like astrophotography processing than just some gimmick/hack.

neilv 4y ago

> Samsung continues to improve Scene Optimizer to reduce any potential confusion that may occur between the act of taking a picture of the real moon and an image of the moon. That bit is a step in the right direction, but I would've preferred the overall tone and message to be one of humility. For example, that they're committing to "honest images" by default, and making some of this more questionable image enhancement to be optional modes/tools that can be enabled consciously. Samsung used to be a low-end brand for computer peripherals. I love the quality and technical innovation of some of their more recent products. I want to see them be one of the most respected and trustworthy brands. Embracing honesty and integrity during this surge of AI methods being shoved into products seems important to that goal.

nerdponx 4y ago
I just want a damn on/off switch for the image processing. Is that so much to ask for?
- PebblesRox 4y ago
  From the webpage: > If users wish to take a picture without the support of AI, users can easily deactivate Scene Optimizer by heading to: Camera → Camera Settings → Scene Optimizer → Off Does that fulfill your requirements or did you mean something different?
  - nerdponx 4y ago
    I missed that, thanks. I wish other phones followed suit with their image processing.

ortusdux 4y ago

If there was a change to the surface of the moon that was visible to the naked eye, would this camera's software filter it out? Because that is where I draw the line. Imagine seeing a large asteroid impact, taking a photo, and getting gaslit.

mustacheemperor 4y ago
Early on in the 'controversy' someone on Reddit undertook a similar test, by photoshopping an image of the moon to have a different crater pattern, blurring it, and taking an enhanced photo. Samsung 'enhanced' the moon with the incorrect crater pattern. After seeing that, I was pretty skeptical about the "they're just swapping in a high res png!" claims, regardless of how much they got repeated. This post is more evidence they're not just swapping in a higher res image, but I hunch people will keep repeating it anyway.
- rolenthedeep 4y ago
  That the enhanced photo contains the wrong data would seem to pretty clearly prove that it is not enhancing the data from the camera sensor and instead using pre-existing photos as the data source.
  - mustacheemperor 4y ago
    To clarify: 1. User took a photo of the "real" moon, and manipulated the craters in photoshop. 2. User photographed a low-resolution image of the manipulated moon image with the Samsung phone. 3. The "enhanced" photo included the manipulated, not-real craters in greater detail. It seems to me that indicates the camera app is utilizing data from the camera sensor to some extent, not just using pre-existing photos, because it "enhanced" craters that do not exist in any pre-existing photos. Why would it indicate the opposite?
sizzle 4y ago
A solution would be to always store the original unenhanced image, like apple does for images in iCloud.

function_seven 4y ago

Ten years ago we got fun and exciting errors in scanned documents.[0] I'm looking forward to ten years from now, when I can read about a conviction being overturned because an AI-enabled camera did a similar "enhancement". [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-23588202 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-23588202

smnrchrds 4y ago
I knew Ryan Gosling was innocent! Context: https://petapixel.com/2020/08/17/gigapixel-ai-accidentally-added-ryan-goslings-face-to-this-photo/ https://petapixel.com/2020/08/17/gigapixel-ai-accidentally-a... Discussion at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24196650 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24196650
- kurthr 4y ago
  Yeah, you can't even see the man on the moon yet! To be fair once I get my Bright Side of the Moon Lunar advertising corp set up distributing images on the moon, we'll be in a great position to sue Samsung for failing to reproduce my advertising with full fidelity.
gabesullice 4y ago
Something like this actually played a significant role in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse. The prosecution tried to enter some low resolution images into the record and his defense argued it shouldn't be admissable because it had been upscaled. They asserted that by upscaling it, pixels had been added to the image which may not reflect what the camera actually captured. IIRC, the image wasn't very detailed and it was pretty difficult to tell where his rifle was pointed. I don't know whether either side's argument was right, I'm only saying it happened.
- DontchaKnowit 4y ago
  Yeah it was actually a very interesting argument to listen to in court. Would recommend anyone interested should go listen ti the trial

x0n 4y ago

This is a total non-answer. Nothing but technojargon and babble for baffling the average consumer. They fall short of admitting that yes, they effectively replace images with "enhancements" that are sourced from their ML models in some cases - they prefer to talk about how they merge multiple frames - taken by you - with AI Magic (tm).

nayuki 4y ago
I got the exact same interpretation of the article and really dislike what they wrote. They start off by trumpeting their wondrous AI image enhancement technology. They make just a passing reference to the deliberately blurred moon image without explaining how their enhancement technology is wholly inappropriate for "enhancing" an image with no detail to begin with. They continue bragging about AI, object recognition, image stabilization, multi-frame super-resolution and denoising - without addressing the elephant in the room, which is replacing blurry objects with pre-loaded stock imagery. It keeps reiterating that what it's doing is "detail enhancement" (I counted 8 times), not "pasting a stock photo". What an utterly disingenuous press release. It's nothing but a red herring meant to distract and divert. > Samsung continues to improve Scene Optimizer to reduce any potential confusion that may occur between the act of taking a picture of the real moon and an image of the moon. So... they end with a line that basically says "we aim to lie more selectively"?

dang 4y ago

Recent and related: Samsung caught faking zoom photos of the Moon - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35136167 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35136167 - March 2023 (27 comments) Update to the “Samsung space zoom moon shots are fake” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35123389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35123389 - March 2023 (122 comments) Samsung “space zoom” moon shots are fake, and here is the proof - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35107601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35107601 - March 2023 (386 comments)

abeppu 4y ago

> However, the moon will not be properly recognized by the camera and Scene Optimizer technology if it is obscured by clouds, or if the moon object itself is the side that is not visible from the Earth. Great, if you're planning a moon-orbiting mission, you now know not to rely on your Samsung Galaxy to give super-resolution when taking images of the far side. Good to know!

russdill 4y ago
There is a list of people that this effects. They probably all have iPhones though.

sizzle 4y ago

A solution would be to always store the original unenhanced image, like apple does for images in iCloud.

newaccount2023 4y ago

[flagged]

yborg 4y ago

After reading a lot of ChatGPT-like marketing cruft, once concludes that they deny nothing here. If you take a photo with the image of the unobscured Moon in it on a Samsung camera, the Moon will be replaced by a generated image of the Moon created in-camera. The details of how this is done aren't really important if you are wondering if the photons reflected from the Moon that hit the sensor are represented in the image file that ultimately is output.

detrites 4y ago
Here's a kind of barometer I came up with: imagine taking a photo of the moon, and the phone simply outright replaces the photo with a downloaded pristine astrophotography shot from a cloud server, and shows it to the user instead. How close a phones actual behaviour is to that dystopia, versus the other extreme of simply dumping the raw pixels from the sensor on the screen, that's how messed up that phone is compared to others on the market. Right now, Samsung appears to be way up the bad end of such a scale. At least for the moon... that is, the one situation we know about because someone jumped through hoops to discover it.
- toxik 4y ago
  Apple does this kind of retouching too as I understand it, but only for bokeh effects and it’s not something they hide.
  - steve_adams_86 4y ago
    I feel like this is signature Apple, and most people who know much about digital photography (especially in phones) is aware that Apple has fairly distinct processing techniques – not necessarily distinct optics. What Samsung did was relatively covert in comparison.
  - Terretta 4y ago
    Apple does "this kind of" retouching, slapping a professionally shot sticker of the thing you phone-camera'd on top of your photograph so it looks pro?

zzzeek 4y ago

samsung: "someone is claiming we are enhancing photos with hardcoded data taken from other photos, let us respond to this claim. We are Enhancing your Photos with Hardcoded Data taken from Other Photos." cant wait til it puts someone elses dog or kid there

sfink 4y ago

I do this too. I meet someone who expresses an opinion relevant to the liberal/conservative divide. Based on which side it better matches, I fill in the rest of their opinions for them. I feel bad for doing it, but it seems to work astonishingly well. Had I not told you, you probably wouldn't have been able to tell. I guess I just meet a lot of people with moon-shaped opinions.

x3n0ph3n3 4y ago
You should feel bad for doing it, because it only contributes to the growing divide between people. There's a fairly large cohort of people with opinions that straddle both sides of the aisle from whom you couldn't fill in most of their opinions based on just a single opinion. reddit.com/r/2ALiberals comes to mind.

LorenDB 4y ago

> Samsung continues to improve Scene Optimizer to reduce any potential confusion that may occur between the act of taking a picture of the real moon and an image of the moon. What is this even supposed to mean? Can somebody explain the difference between "a picture of the real moon" and "an image of the moon"? I would take them to mean the same thing, right? Samsung certainly isn't reducing my confusion with that statement. I guess I'll just stick with my Motorola.

basch 4y ago
between the act of taking a picture of (the real moon) and [a picture of] an image of the moon.
- nayuki 4y ago
  What's the difference between photographing the real moon and photographing an image of the moon? You might say that the real moon is infinitely far away and has a straight line of sight. Okay, what about the moon through periscope mirrors? The moon through binocular lenses (in front of the phone camera)? What about the real moon next to the moon reflected off a window? What about the moon projected through a telescope onto a piece of paper? Which one of these "moons" should be subject to image "enhancement" and which should not? You might say the real moon has a certain angular size and brightness... but again, lenses, filters, cloud cover, distances to artificial objects, brightness of artificial objects. I don't think there is any realistic way to distinguish the real moon from a picture of the moon.
  - basch 4y ago
    The difference is they are going to try and detect it somehow and not optimize fake moons.
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1attice 4y ago

This is the most longwinded version of "yes, we did it, and we're not sorry" in recent memory

twhb 4y ago

This page seems designed to direct attention anywhere but the meat of the issue: are the moon details in Samsung photos derived from sensor data alone, or also external photos? To me, the answer is clear: Samsung can’t produce this result unless they also ingest external, high res moon photos. Yet Samsung frames it as “enhancing details”, not “adding details”, clearly implying the details in question were already there in some form.

JEDI-HACKER 4y ago

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