Samsung unveils Galaxy AI with the Galaxy S24 series, free for now

On 17 January 2024, Samsung presented the Galaxy S24 series at its Galaxy Unpacked event and introduced Galaxy AI, a suite of artificial intelligence features built into the phones' software.

The tools included live translation of phone calls, text summarising and rewriting aids, and image features such as Circle to Search, developed with Google. Some features ran on the device itself, while others relied on cloud processing.

Samsung offered Galaxy AI at no charge on the new phones. It also said that free access to the features would be limited in time, without fixing a date or describing a future pricing model. The wording left open whether some functions might later move behind a paywall.

The launch mattered because it was one of the first large-scale pushes to make generative AI a headline selling point of mainstream smartphones, and it set the stage for later debate over how manufacturers would pay for the cloud services behind such tools.