Less than 24 hours after Samsung wowed smartphone users with its Galaxy Unpacked 2024 event and the unveiling of its Samsung AI the luster quickly faded when its terms of service revealed its limited trail period.
The tech journalist sphere woke up slowly today to the realization that all the cool artificially intelligent features of Samsung’s AI platform will be free to use, but only for two years.
According to the official product page for the Samsung Galaxy S24 lineup, Samsung AI will only be provided for free until the end of 2025.
*Galaxy AI features will be provided for free until the end of 2025 on supported Samsung Galaxy devices. Different terms may apply for AI features provided by third parties.
Samsung
It’s not apparent what becomes of the onboard AI software once the clock strikes the end of 2025. While Samsung does pledge seven years of software update support it’s a bit disappointing to know that Samsung only plans to support its latest phone-selling feature for two years.
As is the case with Microsoft and its venture into AI enabled services, there comes a time when companies leveraging resources intensive large language models have to craft a sustainable economy of scale to continue to provide these platforms in the future.
Pontificating on what the future of Samsung AI will be after 2025 could mean that phone OEM begins to raise the price on its hardware while providing limited free access to its AI layer for two years or roughly the length of most phone carrier contracts.
If users become accustomed to the AI, they’ll willing upgrade when they see any additional hardware subsiding price increases as one-time payments rather another monthly subscription to a new phone vendor.
The alternative for Samsung is to try and get enough people hooked on the viability of Samsung AI as to not jump ship to a Pixel device that will offer much of the same but for free or simply stop using optional AI features and Samsung AI becomes Samsung Milk.