S26 Photo App: 'Sloppify' Your Memories, On Purpose

The essence of a photograph, it seems, is increasingly defined by the beholder.

The evolution of AI in image manipulation, pioneered by Google's Pixel 9, set the stage for Samsung's Galaxy S26 to advance the capability further.

Google incrementally introduced AI editing functionalities into its Photos application. Initially, these tools facilitated subtle background alterations, such as enhancing sky blue or removing crowds. However, the introduction of natural language prompts significantly expanded these capabilities, allowing users to request virtually any modification. While some safeguards were in place, it often proved straightforward to circumvent them, leading to the creation of potentially misleading or harmful images depicting events that never occurred, like simulated helicopter crashes or smoking devices in public spaces.

It is into this evolving landscape that Samsung’s enhanced Photo Assist steps. During its Unpacked event in February, Samsung unveiled that its suite of AI editing tools within the S26's gallery app would incorporate natural language prompt support. While not offering fundamentally different capabilities from Google Photos, Samsung's marketing of these features presented a more explicit embrace of reality manipulation. Examples included using AI to alter one's attire in a photo or digitally adding a pet. This marked a confident stride into the next phase of defining "what a photo is": a photograph can now be precisely what the user desires it to be.

Having extensively utilized Samsung’s AI photo editing, I can report both positive and negative findings. Encouragingly, its guardrails appear robust. Explicitly problematic terms like "dead body" or "fire" are blocked, and previously effective workarounds for AI photo editing on the Pixel 9 Pro proved ineffective here. Attempts to remove clothing, add drug paraphernalia, or simulate crime scenes were unsuccessful. Furthermore, the quality of the edits themselves is generally subpar, which can be viewed as either a drawback or a benefit depending on one's perspective. My primary conclusion is that Samsung has not inadvertently created a tool for harassment or widespread disinformation—other platforms exist for that. Instead, this feature serves as a convenient, albeit often aesthetically questionable, means to "sloppify" one's images with largely harmless effects.

Consider a scenario where professional obligations lead you to the Sphere in Las Vegas, not for a Backstreet Boys concert that just concluded, but to cover a tech keynote featuring a billionaire discussing token generation. To present a more exciting narrative to friends, one might capture the stage and use AI to digitally insert the Backstreet Boys into the image.

I was surprised by the Samsung AI tool's willingness to perform this edit; it even autonomously added a graphic with the name of a past Backstreet Boys tour. However, even without a keen eye for boy band aesthetics, the artificiality is evident. The result appears overly polished, almost cartoonish, and the Sphere itself is rendered as a generic concert venue. Samsung does include a subtle watermark indicating AI usage, though this can be easily cropped out. Content credentials are also embedded within the manipulated image to identify it as AI-generated, but these require specific effort to locate.

When the stakes are lower, the S26’s AI demonstrates greater proficiency. For instance, I photographed my child within a space capsule play structure at the Museum of Flight and then prompted the S26 to change the background to depict outer space. The outcome was quite effective: Earth was visible through the capsule's "window," and an instrument panel was made to glow. Personally, I find such alterations somewhat kitschy, preferring to foster my four-year-old's imagination rather than presenting an AI-generated version of him in space. Yet, this may appeal to others, and I perceive no significant societal harm in such a "sloppy" but innocuous application.

Regardless of one's preference for photo reimagination, Samsung's AI photo editor occasionally misses the mark. Its feature for adding a subject from a "source" image into a scene proved inconsistent at best. When I provided a photo of myself as the source and requested to be added to a picture of my child, the AI instead cloned my child, placing a second version of him next to the original, as if he had a twin. This was an unwelcome result.

For less complex tasks, Samsung’s AI editor performs considerably better, excelling at the types of edits for which AI is uniquely suited. It can efficiently remove individuals from the background of a photograph or tidy up a smeared sauce stain on a plate to enhance a meal's presentation for an Instagram Story. Do these enhanced images still qualify as "real" photos? Should we feel uneasy about such modifications? The answer remains unclear, as the boundaries of authenticity grow increasingly blurred.

In a way, it is a relief that Photo Assist is not overwhelmingly sophisticated. Even when it accurately followed my prompts, a distinctive glossiness in its additions often made the artificiality apparent. Furthermore, using Photo Assist seemed to degrade the overall image quality; the non-AI portions of my edited photos often appeared coarser, as if slightly compressed by the tool. There was also an odd tendency for over-processing, with the AI altering parts of the image unrelated to the prompt. For example, when asked to remove people from the background of a photo of my child holding ice cream, it succeeded but also inadvertently removed some of the ice cream itself.

If photographs are a form of language, then what harm is there in a touch of embellishment?

Last year, I posed a deceptively simple question to Sungdae Joshua Cho, Samsung’s executive vice president and head of camera: “What is a photo?” He described it as the most challenging question of his career. His continued reflection on this query was evident at a press briefing before this year’s Unpacked, where he recalled my question and presented Samsung’s five core pillars of photography. He stated, “Photography is communication.” Having now tested the AI tools integrated with Samsung’s camera app, this perspective gains clarity. If photos serve as a language, a medium for storytelling, then a degree of embellishment can be seen as a natural extension.

The update to Photo Assist for the S26 appears to be designed for these minor "white lies," thankfully not for significant deceptions. However, this raises another pertinent question: when does an AI-edited photo become acceptable, and when does it cross into "slop"? Like many aspects of a world where computational systems can process and reproduce human-like creations, it ultimately comes down to individual taste. It seems we are all on the verge of discovering our personal threshold for what constitutes acceptable "slop."