Samsung, please spare me the Gemini photography tips

Look, I’m not a professional photographer, but I’m from Generation Z. I can take a good photo. But soon my skills may not be good enough for Samsung New Galaxy S25 lineupwhich comes with a new photo plugin powered by Gemini Live AI.

Announced on Wednesday at Samsung Unpacked eventThe new capability comes from Google Gemini, and is primarily designed to serve as a personal companion based on artificial intelligence. Google’s Vice President of Gemini Experiences, Sissie Hsiao, demonstrated the new multimedia capabilities and showed how S25 users can talk to Gemini about a YouTube video or a photo from their camera roll.

One of the things Hsiao showed was how to use AI as a kind of virtual photo assistant, asking questions about how an image can be improved through editing.

You know how you have that friend who, whenever you show them a photo, says something like, “Yes, that’s great, but it would have been better if I did that instead”? This is what seemed to me to help Gemini Live photos.

There were a number of other notable announcements made during the keynote, including all the new hardware upgrades in the cameras and new video and photo editing tools coming in the latest range of Galaxy smartphones. But this AI photo assistance caught my attention because it looks…weird. Maybe useless? Definitely a little condescending. If I’ve already taken the photo, why would I want an AI opinion on it after the fact?

The basic premise that AI knows better than I do what image I want is flawed. I may be an amateur photographer, but I know what I want. Samsung and Google’s idea that Gemini Live can help you become a better photographer is right, in the sense that AI can explain even the most complex editing terms. But I don’t trust an AI’s judgment of what constitutes good art, frankly, to any human. Most importantly, I want to learn how to be a better photographer from other people, from friends and experts, and from good old fashioned trial and error.

Samsung and Google also assume that we want more AI in our phones and in our photography process, which I don’t think is necessarily true. From a smartphone perspective, a CNET poll It found that only 18% of people upgrade for new AI features. Artificial intelligence has been making its way into photo and video editing for a while. But whether it’s generative AI in editing software or live creation with AI-powered image generators, AI is undoubtedly one of them. The most controversial topics In industry.

For Samsung, it’s about how useful photo assistance ultimately is. But from the quick demo we saw at the keynote, where the advice Jiminy gave to the photographer was, “Try shooting on a sunny day. If you can’t wait for the weather to be better, you can try editing the photo afterwards,” I’m not holding my breath.