Current Events > Samsung "space zoom" moon shots are fake, and here is proof.

(+) Yeah! (+)

(stolen from reddit)

Many of us have witnessed the breathtaking moon photos taken with the latest zoom lenses, starting with the S20 Ultra. Nevertheless, I've always had doubts about their authenticity, as they appear almost too perfect. While these images are not necessarily outright fabrications, neither are they entirely genuine. Let me explain.
There have been many threads on this, and many people believe that the moon photos are real (inputmag) - even MKBHD has claimed in this popular youtube short https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6P1VRs68Cqo that the moon is not an overlay, like Huawei has been accused of in the past. But he's not correct. So, while many have tried to prove that Samsung fakes the moon shots, I think nobody succeeded - until now.

WHAT I DID

1. I downloaded this high-res image of the moon from the internet - https://imgur.com/PIAjVKp
2. I downsized it to 170x170 pixels and applied a gaussian blur, so that all the detail is GONE. This means it's not recoverable, the information is just not there, it's digitally blurred: https://imgur.com/xEyLajW

And a 4x upscaled version so that you can better appreciate the blur: https://imgur.com/3STX9mZ
3) I full-screened the image on my monitor (showing it at 170x170 pixels, blurred), moved to the other end of the room, and turned off all the lights. Zoomed into the monitor and voila - https://imgur.com/ifIHr3S
4) This is the image I got - https://imgur.com/bXJOZgI
INTERPRETATION
To put it into perspective, here is a side by side: https://imgur.com/ULVX933
In the side-by-side above, I hope you can appreciate that Samsung is leveraging an AI model to put craters and other details on places which were just a blurry mess. And I have to stress this: there's a difference between additional processing a la super-resolution, when multiple frames are combined to recover detail which would otherwise be lost, and this, where you have a specific AI model trained on a set of moon images, in order to recognize the moon and slap on the moon texture on it (when there is no detail to recover in the first place, as in this experiment). This is not the same kind of processing that is done when you're zooming into something else, when those multiple exposures and different data from each frame account to something. This is specific to the moon.
CONCLUSION
The moon pictures from Samsung are fake. Samsung's marketing is deceptive. It is adding detail where there is none (in this experiment, it was intentionally removed). In this article(https://tinyurl.com/57kwtbty), they mention multi-frames, multi-exposures, but the reality is, it's AI doing most of the work, not the optics, the optics aren't capable of resolving the detail that you see. Since the moon is tidally locked to the Earth, it's very easy to train your model on other moon images and just slap that texture when a moon-like thing is detected.
Now, Samsung does say "No image overlaying or texture effects are applied when taking a photo, because that would cause similar objects to share the same texture patterns if an object detection were to be confused by the Scene Optimizer.", which might be technically true - you're not applying any texture if you have an AI model that applies the texture as a part of the process, but in reality and without all the tech jargon, that's that's happening. It's a texture of the moon.
If you turn off "scene optimizer", you get the actual picture of the moon, which is a blurry mess (as it should be, given the optics and sensor that are used).
To further drive home my point, I blurred the moon even further and clipped the highlights, which means the area which is above 216 in brightness gets clipped to pure white - there's no detail there, just a white blob - https://imgur.com/9XMgt06
I zoomed in on the monitor showing that image and, guess what, again you see slapped on detail, even in the parts I explicitly clipped (made completely 100% white): https://imgur.com/9kichAp
TL:DR Samsung is using AI/ML (neural network trained on 100s of images of the moon) to recover/add the texture of the moon on your moon pictures, and while some think that's your camera's capability, it's actually not. And it's not sharpening, it's not adding detail from multiple frames because in this experiment, all the frames contain the same amount of detail. None of the frames have the craters etc. because they're intentionally blurred, yet the camera somehow miraculously knows that they are there. And don't even get me started on the motion interpolation on their "super slow-mo", maybe that's another post in the future..
New test - I photoshopped one moon next to another (to see if one moon would get the AI treatment, while another not), and managed to coax the AI to do exactly that.
This is the image that I used, which contains 2 blurred moons: https://imgur.com/kMv1XAx
I replicated my original setup, shot the monitor from across the room, and got this: https://imgur.com/RSHAz1l
As you can see, one moon got the "AI enhancement", while the other one shows what was actually visible to the sensor.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/0/8/AABUaRAADTmU.jpg

Well of course they're fake, because the moon is fake

Really good post OP

This changes everything

I am still wondering why the reddit op didn't screen record what he did.

It would literally be 100% proof. Cuz I can't replicate it on my phone for some reason, maybe my screen isn't as good or smth idk.

UnholyMudcrab posted...

Well of course they're fake, because the moon is fake

Humans have been observing the moon since before the time of written history, written countless books, both historical and fantastical, about the moon, and featured the moon from cave wall paintings to digital art. We see the moon in the sky almost every night, and some times even during the days, and calendars since ancient times are based on the moon's phases.
Suffice to say, with no shortage of evidence pointing towards the moon being very real, the only conclusion we can draw from this is that the moon is, actually, not real. Wake up sheeple!

Thompson posted...

Suffice to say, with no shortage of evidence pointing towards the moon being very real, the only conclusion we can draw from this is that the moon is, actually, not real. Wake up sheeple!

Tide goes in, tide goes out. You can't explain that

there's a moon in the sky
it's called the moon

ROBANN_88 posted...

Tide goes in, tide goes out. You can't explain that

Magnets. But how do they work?

From what I understand the phone just has ai add in some of the detail and other such stuff to make the picture better.

I'm gonna try this with my s22+ tonight though. I never heard of space zoom before.

All animals birds.

itachi15243 posted...

From what I understand the phone just has ai add in some of the detail and other such stuff to make the picture better.

I'm gonna try this with my s22+ tonight though. I never heard of space zoom before.

The algorithm sells itself as a supersampler that is able to recover detail, but it's actually a generator making up detail that wasn't there.

so this is how they do that "zoom in and enhance" on NCIS?

ROBANN_88 posted...

so this is how they do that "zoom in and enhance" on NCIS?

Haha

OP is right. I have the S22 Ultra and I've tried taking pictures of the moon. They dont look good, at all.

I thought it was understood that AI was adding stuff in, but... oh well

I'm fairly certain that when uploading images to Imgur, the site strips out all metadata to prevent online stalkers.

Curious what the results would be if one were to rifle those original pictures to somewhere like this and have them fully analyzed:

https://fotoforensics.com/

This is nothing new. AI/ML are the reasons why smartphone photography has made major strides in the last several years. Software algorithms have made up for the relative inadequacy of phone cameras to capture increasingly clear and vivid pictures as of late.

Portrait mode. Night mode. Samsung's Space Zoom and moon mode. Google's Super Res Zoom and Magic Eraser. Apple's Deep Fusion. Guess how all that is handled?

Take away AI/ML and all phone camera pictures would suck from iPhone to Pixel. Let's not pretend that Samsung is doing anything nefarious here. If these paid YouTubers and tech journalists care that much on capturing what is real then disable Samsung Scene Optimizer and capture everything in RAW.

up

I took clearer pictures here in Hawaii on a clear night

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/8/0/8/AAOOJNAAERoo.jpg

Edit: also went back and fully read what you posted now, went over my head so now I get it... disregard

Link to reddit post?

This story is so old hat.

See here when it was tested with the S21 Ultra a few years ago:
https://www.inverse.com/input/reviews/is-samsung-galaxy-s21-ultra-using-ai-to-fake-detailed-moon-photos-investigation-super-resolution-analysis

And here's Samsung themselves explaining it in their Korean community forum last year:
https://r1-community-samsung-com.translate.goog/t5/camcyclopedia/%EB%8B%AC-%EC%B4%AC%EC%98%81/ba-p/19202094?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-GB

The redditor who started this nonsense is making much ado about nothing.

The guy in the first video has recognized his error and made a new video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1afpDuTb-P0

eggcorn posted...

The algorithm sells itself as a supersampler that is able to recover detail, but it's actually a generator making up detail that wasn't there.

Not what its doing exactly. Its recognizing the moon and then adding detail to make it sharper. Its no different then taking a picture of a sign or license plate and then the AI enhances the details like the text on the thing so that it comes out sharper.

https://youtu.be/EKYJ-gwGLXQ

1st da landing now da pics smh.