Editorial illustration for Samsung launches AI ad “Brighten Your After Hours” to demo Galaxy S26 video
Galaxy S26 AI Video Teases Low-Light Camera Magic
Samsung launches AI ad “Brighten Your After Hours” to demo Galaxy S26 video
Samsung dropped a video ad on February 26. It's called "Brighten Your After Hours." Two people skateboard through an unnaturally crisp, perfectly lit night. This is a showcase, Samsung says, for the Galaxy S26's low-light video chops.
But a line of fine print at the end tells a different story: the scene was generated with AI tools. This clip isn't an outlier. It's part of a broader, curious push from the company's social channels, featuring AI-crafted cartoons for appliances and surreal edits of cats and philosophizing snowmen.
Samsung's own policy commits to using the C2PA standard to label such content. Yet on YouTube and Instagram right now, the skateboarding video plays without those platforms' own AI disclosures.
The "Brighten your after hours" video features two people skateboarding at night, and supposedly shows off the low-light video capabilities of the upcoming Galaxy S26 devices. Fine print appears at the bottom of the screen towards the end of the video, flagging that it was "generated with the assistance of AI tools," but there are obvious signs even without the disclosure. The vegetable-laden shopping bags look artificial and unnaturally weighted, for example, and cobblestones in the road appear to shift around.
This video, and several others that use AI to promote camera features, all carry the tag line "Can your phone do that?" but don't specify if Samsung is using its own phones or AI models to generate the content. It wouldn't be the first time that the company has misrepresented its smartphone camera capabilities in marketing materials. Samsung has also been posting low-quality cartoons (which look suspiciously Disney-styled) to promote AI home appliances, cat edits, and snowmen who are ironically struggling to determine what's real -- all made or manipulated using AI.
Most include a similar AI disclosure in the clips, but YouTube and Instagram notably haven't added their own AI labels on the "Brighten your after hours" video, despite Google, Meta, and Samsung all having adopted C2PA -- the authenticity standard used by most AI labeling systems.
So the ad asks, "Can your phone do that?" A fairer question might be whether the actual Galaxy S26 camera can. Samsung's history of misstating camera capabilities in ads is well-documented. The company is a backer, alongside Google and Meta, of the C2PA technical standard for labeling synthetic media.
But that standard relies on platforms to enforce it. On YouTube and Instagram today, the skateboarding ad carries no such platform-applied label.
Common Questions Answered
How is Samsung using AI to demonstrate the Galaxy S26's video capabilities?
Samsung created an AI-generated promotional video called 'Brighten Your After Hours' featuring two people skateboarding at night to showcase the phone's low-light video potential. The video includes a fine print disclosure that it was generated with AI tools, demonstrating the company's commitment to transparency about AI-generated content.
What transparency measures does Samsung include with its AI-generated promotional content?
Samsung adds a fine print disclosure at the end of the AI-generated video, explicitly stating that the content was 'generated with the assistance of AI tools'. This approach follows the company's recent efforts to be transparent about AI-generated media, including watermarking and metadata tagging in their Galaxy phone features.
What are some noticeable signs that the Galaxy S26 promotional video was AI-generated?
The AI-generated video contains some artificial-looking elements, such as unnaturally weighted vegetable-laden shopping bags and potentially unrealistic cobblestone textures. These subtle imperfections suggest the video was created using generative AI tools rather than being a traditional live-action shoot.
Further Reading
- Samsung Uses AI-Generated Ads to Market Galaxy S26 — TechBuzz.ai
- Samsung “shows off” Galaxy S26 Ultra camera improvements in an AI video — PhoneArena
- Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra: Latest camera teaser is AI slop — NotebookCheck
- Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra Latest camera teaser is AI slop — NotebookCheck