I tried Portrait Studio AI on the Galaxy Z Flip 6 — the good, the bad and the weird

One of the newest Galaxy AI features that I’ve been trying out on the Galaxy Z Flip 6 is Photo Assist. Specifically, it’s the Portrait Studio feature of Photo Assist that uses generative AI to take real photos of myself (or other people) — and then create different kinds of sketches with my likeness.

With more phones baking in AI features, this is Samsung’s way of making its foldable phone unique in the space. Although, I suspect that Photo Assist will roll out to the Galaxy S24 series and others in its lineup. But for now, they’re exclusive to the Z Flip 6 and Z Fold 6 .

I’ve been trying it out on many of my selfies to see exactly what Galaxy AI thinks of me. Using different photos for each generation, I’ll show you the four types of AI-generated images that Photo Assist can create and tell you if they paint an accurate picture.

Comic

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Out of all the different options, I prefer the set of images it creates when I select the comic option. I took a slightly angled selfie using the Z Flip 6’s 10MP front-facing camera, and even with the weakest camera in its arsenal, Photo Assist manages to produce a set that I actually wouldn’t mind using as my avatar photos with my social media accounts. One of them makes me look like I came out of an anime show, complete with longer hair than what I have in real life.

3D Cartoon

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If you’ve always wondered what you’d look like in a Pixar animated film, then you’ll want to use the 3D Cartoon option in Portrait Studio. Similar to the selfie I used from before, but in a more straight on capture of my face, I think the set of AI-generated images it produces could pass off as legitimate Pixar made stuff. I squinched my face a little, which looks like it was recreated in one of the renderings.

Watercolor

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With the sun setting by the beach, I was still rocking my Ray-Ban Meta smart sunglasses when I snapped a selfie of myself and selected the watercolor option in Portrait Studio. While I’m not as thrilled by the results, mainly how it oddly changed my hair style in a dramatic way, I was hoping that it could at least create the background in the same watercolor style as the rest of the images. Instead, it just kept the same color pattern for the background in all of the shots.

Sketch

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And finally, there’s the sketch option that generates a black and white sketch of my photos. I will admit that all four AI-generated sketches all feature the same head tilt in my actual photo. However, they all make me look much older — especially with a deeper receding hairline. They make me look like I’m a poker player that’s trying to keep a straight face while bluffing with a weak hand.

Bottom Line

While these AI-generated images give me a chuckle at times, I can see myself perhaps using some of them as profile photos. Is this Galaxy AI feature more helpful than others? For me, I wouldn’t lean on it as much as say Chat Assist’s ability to translate messages in any app — or Generative Edit’s ability to remove unwanted things in my photos.

At the same time, I did come across a few inaccurate creations that had me scratching my head. Take a peek at the image above to see what I mean. It’s clearly an AI failure and I can’t understand how it even managed to generate such an oddball image. Clearly it thinks I apparently have four eyeballs.

So far, this has only happened once and could be a fluke, but I’m still wondering how Galaxy AI analyzed my original photo and thought I was a four-eyed human. Regardless, I’d like to see Photo Assist evolve into something far more helpful — like being able to make selections in my photos and type into a text box what I’d like to change. Perhaps I could give myself a fishing hat or something? I know how painstakingly long doing something like this could be, so if artificial intelligence could do it for me, I think Photo Assist could be a more valuable tool.

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