The Samsung Galaxy S24 family is big on AI features, but make a rather interesting concession. Images modified using the new generative AI tool will feature a small watermark (pictured above) in the bottom left-hand corner, as well as metadata reflecting their state as being AI edited.
The watermark is only applied to images where significant generative AI edits have been made, such as reframing your shot (and thus generating imagery outside of the original scene) or resizing and repositioning elements within the photo. Watermarks aren't applied if you simply use an AI-powered edit suggestion. These suggestions are lower touch, and tweak elements like contrast and saturation rather than fundamentally changing the photo itself.
Samsung Australia's director of mobile experience, Eric Chou, told WhistleOut that this functionality is designed to help distinguish when AI has modified a photo.
"There's a lot of debate about what is human and what is AI, so we do embed the AI-generated content into the metadata, so when you are looking at the metadata of a photo, you know it's AI-edited," said Chou.
"The watermark itself is on the photo. When you share that photo, the watermark is still there."
In early hands-on time with the Galaxy S24 family, we found the watermark can easily be cropped out by editing the photo after you’ve made your generative edits. It's unclear whether this was because of early or software or not. The metadata on these images would still reflect they were edited with AI.
The Pixel 8 family also have generative AI photo editing features. If you use these, the metadata of a photo is edited, but the image isn't watermarked.
Samsung's watermarking feature comes at a time when there's been an overwhelming amount of discourse around AI-generated imagery. There's the philosophical question of "what's a photo", as well as more pertinent issues of whether AI-generated photos could be used to spread misinformation.
The Australian federal government weighed in on the topic this week, and tech companies could be asked to watermark or label AI-generated content going forward. If that ends up being the case, Samsung is one step ahead.
Alex Choros
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