Samsung was recently caught in an outburst following widespread reports that its camera software faked zoomed-in photos of the moon, but things could get even more disturbing. A Verge a reader wrote in on Wednesday to tell us that the company’s software is adding teeth to photos of their seven-month-old daughter.
This reader says they recently received an S23 Ultra and decided to try out the Remaster feature in Samsung’s photo viewing app, Gallery. (This is the phone’s default photo app, and the feature is available in the camera roll if you visit your camera roll.)
They expected something similar to what Google Photos does, offering specific settings and filters, photo blurring, and the like. Instead, they got the results you can see below, with the original image on the left and the “Remastered” one on the right.
So… this is some nightmare fuel. Sure, it wipes out some ugly snot (can’t the world think that this baby isn’t ready for its close-up 100 percent of the time), but it also seems like it looks at the baby’s tongue and immediately jumps to “I know what this should look like: a nice row of fully grown teeth!’
The reader also sent us a video of the Remaster feature turning their daughter’s tongue into teeth in another photo, making it look like it wasn’t just a one-time problem.
I was unable to reproduce these teething issues myself using the same version of the Gallery app on a regular S22. I tried to remaster half a dozen baby photos (and even a screenshot of the updated, less teeth Sonic trailer ) and I’ve never seen anything like what this user got. I also haven’t been able to find any other people reporting this type of problem, so it’s impossible to say for sure what’s going on.
We reached out to Samsung for comment but did not immediately hear back.
Samsung’s website says the Remastering feature “automatically removes shadows and reflections to make your photos look great.” Unlike Samsung’s explanation of the Scene Optimizer feature, which adds detail to the moon, Samsung’s description of the Remaster feature doesn’t even include any hand-waving about “AI” or “deep learning.” It doesn’t even really sound like the beautification filters we’ve seen on phones for years, with teeth-whitening filters that could possibly trigger in such a nasty way. Based on what Samsung wrote, I expected it to just change my exposure settings, similar to Google Photos’ “Enhance” feature.
So where do teeth come from?
A reader described the resulting photo as “much more disturbing than a fake moon photo, if you ask me,” and I kind of agree – altered moon photos just look like slightly better photos of the moon, while this is the epitome of chattering anxious teeth.
I will say, however, that there is a difference in context here. The fake moon happens automatically in the camera app if you have a certain feature turned on. Here you still have to specifically request a remaster (which you have the option of discarding, leaving the original intact). The moon story has sparked discussions about what exactly it means to take a photo, while it’s mostly just a story about an editing feature that’s too aggressive. If Samsung used AI to babysit or give them teeth straight from the camera, we’d be having a very different conversation here, but so far, that’s not happening. But I still hate watching it.