Samsung confirms Galaxy AI coming to 100 million devices, but still undecided on paid tier
The recent launch of the Galaxy S24 Series by Samsung showed a strong emphasis on the "Galaxy AI" suite of AI capabilities. Although these features do enhance the user experience and provide some help, the fact that they are currently limited to the latest flagship does present a hurdle for those that didn't see a need to upgrade their hardware this time around.
Fortunately, as previously announced, many of the Galaxy AI features will eventually hit older Galaxy devices. Initially, the list of devices getting these features was limited to more recent ones, such as the Galaxy S23 series, Galaxy S23 FE, Galaxy Z Fold 5, Galaxy Z Flip 5, and Galaxy Tab S9. These have been confirmed by Samsung to get these updates in the first half of 2024 (by the end of June).
However, in a new statement from Samsung Electronics' President of mobile business, T.M. Roh, the company is also now confirming that Galaxy AI is coming to about 100 million Galaxy mobile devices worldwide this year. Additionally, Roh was quoted stating that notwithstanding the expenses associated with the development of Galaxy AI, the features will be accessible without charge until 2025, but the brand has not yet determined the subsequent course of action.
According to our analysis, there are various needs for mobile AI. So, there will be consumers who will be satisfied with using the AI capabilities for free. Then there could also be customers who wish for even more powerful AI capabilities, and even pay for them. So, in the future decision making, we will take all these factors into consideration. - T.M. Roh (via ET Telecom)
Samsung's unclear position on whether the features will remain free for existing Galaxy AI users, has sparked quite a bit of controversy in the tech community. Galaxy AI is not a solo project, but one that has been developed by Samsung in partnership with Google, and many of the features are powered by Google's Gemini models. This suggests that a significant financial investment has been made by the company to bring these capabilities to its newest devices.
However, many take the position that the $100 price increase of the Ultra model should suffice to offset the costs associated with software development and that pulling a bait and switch on the consumers next year is in poor taste. This may be why Samsung has not been entirely clear on its intentions yet, sort of testing the waters first to see how the users respond. There's still a bit of a ways to go before this is something we have to really worry about, but in the meantime, we can definitely enjoy Galaxy AI while it is still free.
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