Samsung's AI TV can smarten up your house, sharpen up your content

Samsung Electronics' AI TV includes features to enhance any picture quality, while also controlling smart home appliances and monitoring air quality.

A Samsung researcher explains "Relumino Mode" on its AI TV lineup to reporters at a press event on Thursday, introducing Samsung AI TV's key features. The event took place at the electronics giant's research lab in Suwon, Gyeonggi. [SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS]

Samsung Electronics’ AI TV has been designed to juggle multiple roles to help consumers easily manage their home environment while delivering a personalized viewing experience, including for people with disabilities.

Samsung’s AI TV lineup was initially unveiled at CES 2024 in Las Vegas in January, presenting a vision that AI TVs would serve as the hub for monitoring and controlling smart home aspects such as lighting, temperature and energy consumption.

“Samsung’s AI TVs can automatically recommend what the users need when they sense that someone is nearby,” said Yong Seok-woo, head of Samsung Electronics’ display division, at a press event held in the electronics maker’s research lab in Suwon, Gyeonggi, on Thursday, held to introduce the AI TV’s various functions.

“We plan to provide free Tizen OS upgrades with new AI features for the next seven years to customers who purchase a 2024 Samsung AI TV.”

Yong Seok-woo, head of Samsung Electronics’ display division, speaks at a press event to introduce Samsung AI TV's key features at Samsung's research lab in Suwon, Gyeonggi, on Thursday.

Tizen OS is a smart TV platform developed by Samsung that has been installed in over 270 million Samsung smart TVs as of 2023. The company is expanding its operating system ecosystem to other TV manufacturers, such as German electronics maker Loewe’s premium TVs that were released in July.

Samsung's AI TVs come with a built-in SmartThings platform, allowing them to connect to and control various gadgets such as lights, curtains and air conditioners. Its 3-D Map View feature provides an aerial blueprint of a user’s residence with the status of connected devices, while also monitoring room temperature and air quality.

For the display, the TVs rolled out various functions to provide a tailored viewing experience that even offers customization based on content genres.

Its touted AI upscaling feature automatically upgrades all display resolutions to 8K. Old films, drama series or any low-resolution footage is converted to reveal sharper and clearer details such as skin texture, hair, clothes and background elements.

But the feature is automatically applied to all content and cannot be disabled.

Users can, however, customize other display options such as chroma, brightness and shadows or color tones on-screen. Once the setting is fixed, the AI perceives the settings based on content genre such as sports and movies and automatically applies the same viewing preferences to other content that users watch.

For users with disabilities, those with low vision can view the screen in “Relumino Mode,” which enhances screen outlines and colors for better clarity. The AI can also convert subtitles into speech so that visually impaired users can “hear” the text. For those with hearing impairments, the small superimposition of the sign language interpreter usually tucked in the corner can be enlarged for easier viewing.

A Samsung researcher explains a feature of its AI TV lineup that allows users with hearing impairments to enlarge the on-screen sign language interpreter for easier viewing. [SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS]

Its natural language-processing function allows users to easily peruse for content they want. For instance, if a user asks the TV to find a movie that involves police officers selling chicken, the famous Korean film “Extreme Job” (2019) immediately pops up.

Users can speak into the remote, but the TV can also perceive and comprehend natural speech from the distance at which one would normally be situated on a sofa. As of now, the TVs can comprehend two languages: Korean and English.

Samsung is also working to incorporate real-time translation functions in its AI TVs, scheduled to be updated sometime in the first half of 2025.

“For instance, if an actor in a foreign film speaks, the dialogue will be displayed directly in Korean text using AI,” Yong said. “We are also developing features for voice translation too.”

BY LEE JAE-LIM [lee.jaelim@joongang.co.kr]