Samsung is showcasing the AI-powered photo editing capabilities built into its Galaxy S26 Ultra flagship, demonstrating features that let users manipulate images with natural language prompts. The company's second installment in its San Francisco travel series highlights Photo Assist and Creative Studio tools that can restore partially eaten food, merge multiple scenes, change time of day in photos, and generate custom stickers - all through on-device processing.
Samsung is doubling down on AI-powered photo editing with its Galaxy S26 Ultra, showcasing features that blur the line between computational photography and generative AI manipulation. The company's latest demonstration reveals how far smartphone photo editing has come - and raises familiar questions about authenticity.
The flagship feature, Photo Assist, lets users edit images through conversational prompts. In Samsung's San Francisco demo, typing "Make it look uneaten" restored a partially eaten cake to its original form. Another prompt combined a street scene with a passing tram, creating what Samsung calls "a seamless result - as if taken in a single moment." Users can also transform daytime harbor shots into sunset or nighttime scenes by simply asking the AI to adjust lighting and sky conditions.
This isn't Samsung's first rodeo with AI photo editing. The company has been steadily building these capabilities across its Galaxy lineup, but the S26 Ultra represents a significant leap in processing power and feature sophistication. What's notable here is the natural language interface - you don't need to understand layers, masks, or selection tools. You just ask.
The Creative Studio feature takes things further into artistic territory. It can analyze a photo's texture and colors to render it in different artistic styles, including oil painting effects. Samsung demonstrated this by transforming sea lion photos from Pier 39 into painterly compositions. The tool also generates custom character stickers from photos, offering seven themed sets like "A slice of Life" and "Today's vibe" that work across messaging apps and notes.
This puts Samsung squarely in competition with Magic Editor and Pixel Studio tools, as well as Clean Up feature. The difference? Samsung is betting that users want more creative freedom rather than just object removal. While Google focuses on refining what's already in the frame and Apple emphasizes simplicity, Samsung is giving users tools to fundamentally reimagine their photos.
