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What is Galaxy AI? Everything you need to know about Samsung’s wild AI features

Samsung Galaxy AI on the Galaxy Z Fold 6.
Andy Boxall / Digital Trends

If you have been tempted by a new Galaxy smartphone from Samsung recently, there’s a good chance you’ve heard all about Galaxy AI — the company’s big artificial intelligence push. Its features spread throughout the phone, from calls to photos, the lock screen and even further into its Health app, which is used by its smartwatches and earbuds.

But what exactly is Galaxy AI, and what features does it contain?

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What is Galaxy AI, and what devices have it?

Samsung Galaxy AI on the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Galaxy Z Flip 6.
Andy Boxall / Digital Trends

Galaxy AI is the name given to a range of different AI-driven features that are available on a wide variety of current Samsung mobile devices. Samsung calls Galaxy AI a way to increase your productivity, become even more creative, and get more things done on your phone in a smarter way than ever before. You’ll find Galaxy AI features on the following devices:

  • Galaxy S21 series
  • Galaxy S22 series
  • Galaxy S23 series
  • Galaxy S24 series
  • Galaxy S25 series
  • Galaxy Z Fold 4
  • Galaxy Z Fold 5
  • Galaxy Z Fold 6
  • Galaxy Z Flip 4
  • Galaxy Z Flip 5
  • Galaxy Z Flip 6
  • Galaxy Tab S8 series
  • Galaxy Tab S9 series

Along with those gadgets, you’ll also find Galaxy AI on the Galaxy Buds 3 and Galaxy Buds Pro 3. The Galaxy Watch 7, Galaxy Watch Ultra, and Galaxy Ring use Galaxy AI, too. Finally, Samsung’s Galaxy Book 4 Edge laptops have Galaxy AI inside.

The Galaxy AI features available differ by model and region, and some may only operate when you connect two Samsung devices together, such as a Galaxy Z Fold 6 and a Galaxy Watch 7 or Galaxy Ring. While the Galaxy S21 and Galaxy S22 phones can run some Galaxy AI features, the list is very short.

To get the most from Galaxy AI, you need the latest Galaxy S25 models, the Galaxy Z Fold 6, or the Galaxy Z Flip 6. Samsung states that all its Galaxy AI features will be free to use until the end of 2025. This may mean a subscription will be introduced after this time, but we don’t know anything about Samsung’s plans for costs, packages, and features involved in such a scheme.

Now Bar and Now Brief

The Now Brief on the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra.
Now Brief Andy Boxall / Digital Trends

If you buy a Samsung Galaxy S25, Galaxy S25 Plus, or Galaxy S25 Ultra you will be able to use the latest Galaxy AI features headlined by the Now Bar and Now Brief. The Now Bar lives on the phone’s lock screen and operates something like Apple’s Dynamic Island, where it shows live activities like timers and music playing, along with key controls for quick access. It also informs you about the Now Brief, which Samsung says is a personal assistant on your phone, ready to help manage your day-to-day activities.

Now Brief lives as a widget on the home screen and provides several updates during the day, letting you know everything from upcoming appointments, the time it will take you to get to a destination based on traffic, how you slept based on data from your Galaxy Ring or Galaxy Watch 7, and plenty more. It learns based on your interactions with the phone, and information in apps like the calendar.

The Now Bar on the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra's lock screen.
Now Bar Andy Boxall / Digital Trends

You can customize the Now Brief to include information from various Samsung apps, including Routines, News, Gallery stories, Music and Podcasts, and communication apps. Data is processed on the phone. Both the Now Brief and Now Bar are part of One UI 7, and are currently only found on the Galaxy S25 series. Whether other Galaxy phones will get the features in the future is unknown.

Call- and chat-based Galaxy AI features

Samsung Galaxy AI on the Galaxy Z Fold 6.
Andy Boxall / Digital Trends

Browse the Settings page on any compatible Samsung phone and you’ll find a heading named Galaxy AI, which gives an overview of the core features on most of the smartphones named above. Here’s what you get, but be aware some may not be available for your phone:

Call Assist: This feature will translate calls for you in real time. Multiple languages are available, including Spanish, Chinese (both mainland and Hong Kong), German, Italian, French, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Thai, and English in the U.K., Indian, and Australian forms. The feature works in the main phone app and other apps where calls are possible, including WhatsApp, Google Meet, Instagram, and Line.

Chat Assist: In addition to translating messages, Chat Assist will also write messages for you, based on a short summary, in different styles along with checking your grammar and spelling. The available languages match those used by Call Assist, and you can select which features within Chat Assist are activated, so if you don’t want its style and grammar tips, they can be turned off. Similarly, you can switch the grammar and spelling tips to be processed only on the device.

Flip 6 interpreter mode.
Flip 6 interpreter mode Joe Maring / Digital Trends

Interpreter: Another translation-based AI feature, this time it works during spoken, in-person conversations. The live translation appears either on the screen as text or with audio through a pair of Galaxy Buds. The feature can be used either as a tap-to-talk two-way conversation or in a live setting where the phone’s microphone stays on, allowing it to be used in a variety of settings.

This feature changes depending on the Galaxy phone you are using. If you are using a Galaxy Z Fold 6 or Z Flip 6, multiple screens can be set up to show translated text in real time without sharing a screen with the other person. The same languages used by the other Assist features are supported.

Notes and productivity Galaxy AI features

Galaxy AI settings page on the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6.
Joe Maring / Digital Trends

Note Assist: This feature is off by default, so go to the Settings page to activate it. It brings most of the same features from Call and Chat Assist into the Samsung Notes app — such as spelling and grammar checks and translation — along with auto-formatting, summaries, and transcripts for voice recordings. It also includes Sketch to Image, which turns your basic drawings into something more realistic, which is part of the Drawing Assist Galaxy AI feature.

Transcript Assist: Like Note Assist, this is off by default, but when you activate it, the AI will provide text transcriptions, summaries, and translations of voice recordings made with Samsung’s Recorder app. It supports the same languages as the other translation features and requires the original audio to be processed in the cloud, but Samsung does not store these.

Browsing Assist: You’ve probably guessed already, but Browsing Assist will summarize and translate web pages you visit using Samsung’s Browser app. The same situation applies here as with Transcript Assist, where data is processed in the cloud but not stored, and the feature is turned off by default.

Get creative with Galaxy AI

An example of Galaxy AI's Edit Suggestions feature on the Galaxy S24 Plus.
Joe Maring / Digital Trends

Audio Eraser: This feature removes unwanted and distracting background noise from your videos, from voices to the wind. It’s activated under the Video Editor mode at the touch of a button, and is very effective.

Photo Ambient Wallpaper: In addition to the Generative AI wallpaper mode seen on various Android phones, where the AI creates a wallpaper based on multiple keywords, Photo Ambient Wallpaper takes one of your own photos and adds a different weather effect to it. For it to work, location data from the weather app is required.

Drawing Assist: We’ve already mentioned one feature of Drawing Assist, Sketch to Image, which changes your basic sketches into something more impressive. This feature is used in Samsung Notes. Drawing Assist then does the same thing in the Photo Editor, changing your sketches scribbled over the top of your photos into something more photorealistic. At the moment, Sketch to Image is only available on the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Galaxy Z Flip 6.

The Sketch to Image feature in Samsung's Galaxy AI suite.
Sketch to image Andy Boxall / Digital Trends

Photo Assist: This feature works inside Samsung’s photo editing suite in the Gallery app. It includes editing features such as moving, resizing, and shifting people and objects to change the look of your photo, and removing unwanted visual clutter. There are also a couple of fun tools in Photo Assist. The first is called Portrait Studio, which takes photos of people and reimagines them in a new style, such as a 3D cartoon, a sketch, a watercolor, or a comic drawing. The second is Sketch to Image, where you scribble a basic sketch into a photo, and the AI turns it into a “real” addition. Depending on what you sketch, the end result can be amazingly realistic.

Instant Slo-mo: This cool video feature is available on some Samsung phones, including the Galaxy S24, Galaxy S23 series, Z Fold, and Z Flip phones. It uses AI to generate additional frames in a video you’ve shot, allowing you to slow it down to make your slow-mo video, even when you haven’t deliberately shot a slow-motion video. It’s available in the Gallery app on compatible phones.

Other Galaxy AI features

Using Circle to Search on the Google Pixel 8a.
Circle to Search Andy Boxall / Digital Trends

Circle to Search: While Circle to Search is available on many Samsung phones, it’s technically a Google image search feature, so it’s also an option on Pixel 9 phones and other modern Android devices like the OnePlus 13. Using it is simple. Tap and hold on the bottom of the screen to activate it, circle the part of an image you want it to search for, and that’s it. On the Galaxy S25 Circle to Search has become even more useful, as it can listen to and then search for music, and translate text too.

Health Assist: If you use Samsung’s Health app and own a Galaxy Watch or Galaxy Ring, then Galaxy AI takes your data and provides more personalized insights and guidance. This includes the new Energy Score, which is based on sleep and activity data, and what Samsung calls “motivational messages and training tips” it will send to you each day.

Galaxy Buds 3 Pro: Although the Galaxy Buds 3 Pro don’t have a specific Galaxy AI feature of their own, Samsung has used Galaxy AI to introduce new and improved features. For example, it uses AI algorithms for the Adaptive EQ, the active noise cancellation, and the ambient sound mode, including to help it recognize the sound of a siren. The Buds 3 Pro also work with the various translation features with either a listening or conversation mode option available, provided they are connected to a compatible Galaxy phone.

Samsung has continued to update Galaxy AI with more features, and we can expect more to come in the future, so this list will continue to grow. It also uses the Galaxy AI branding in different ways, so get used to seeing it pop up on everything from its laptops to its earbuds today and likely more of its smart-connected products in the future.

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Andy Boxall
Andy is a Senior Writer at Digital Trends, where he concentrates on mobile technology, a subject he has written about for…
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