One of the big announcements during the recent Samsung Galaxy Unpacked event, besides the Galaxy S24 family of phones, was Galaxy AI. We’ve given it a try for ourselves, and it would be wrong to say that the features were not useful. The question of if it will be something that is perpetually available, though, remains.
Sitting quite inconspicuously as part of the fine print on the official product pages of the Samsung Galaxy S24 devices is a note that says “Galaxy AI features will be provided for free until the end of 2025 on supported Samsung Galaxy devices”. It goes on to say that “different terms may apply for AI features provided by third parties”, which likely refers to the Circle to Search feature, as it is more Google’s thing.
Hinting at the possibility of paying for generative AI tools is not exclusive to Galaxy AI. In fact, is is not uncommon at all, despite the tech only being accessible to the average consumer recently. While not a direct equivalent, test builds of Microsoft Windows 11 has shown that Cowriter for Notepad and Cocreator for Paint will come with a few coins or tokens that allow for a few free uses.
It is still unclear what one has to do to get more coins once the initial batch has been used up, but the implication here is that they will have to be bought. And it feels pretty similar for the Galaxy AI once 2026 rolls around, even if it’s still a long way away.
We’ve asked a Samsung representative about this, and we’ve been told that the idea of paying for the service after the two years is up is still up in the air. In the same vein, it’s still not yet clear if this end of 2025 window is a hard limit, or if next year’s Galaxy S25 will get its own two year window.
(Source: Samsung [1]. [2])
