Surely you heard that Samsung announced its new family of Galaxy S24 phones. This will be Samsung’s high-end model for 2024 and the one that will have to compete with the iPhone 15 and the Google Pixel 8.
As always, we will see better cameras, better screen, better processor and, most importantly, the addition of having artificial intelligence inside the phone… for a limited time if you don’t pay.
Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, S24 Plus, and S24 include a wide variety of new AI features, from conversation translation to object removal from photos (Google’s Magic Erase). And they will be available on many previous phones.
But, as discovered by Android Central, the fine print on Samsung’s website reveals that they may not be free forever. And that could be hard to sell.
Free for a limited time, will Samsung convince?
The footnote on the Galaxy S24 Ultra product page is imprecise, but clearly leaves the door open for Samsung to charge in the future: “Galaxy AI features will be offered for free until the end of 2025 on compatible Samsung Galaxy devices. Different terms may apply to AI features provided by third parties.”
Samsung also did not provide much clarification. Drew Blackard, Vice President of Mobile at Samsung US, told The Verge: “We are committed to making Galaxy AI features available to as many of our users as possible. We will not consider any changes in that direction before the end of 2025.”
For now, there is not much more information, but many of the features of Galaxy AI from S24 are enabled by Google Cloud, so either of the two companies could end up putting their features behind a paywall.
It’s not too surprising if we consider how expensive it is to offer these features and run the large AI models that power them. Manufacturers could turn to subscription models to cover these ongoing costs, as they can’t be exactly offset by advertising like Google does with searches.
But it’s a small change in the way we think about buying a phone: right now, they don’t come with any additional charges besides the purchase price, unless you choose to add a protection plan or additional cloud storage through iCloud or Google One, for example.
