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Samsung’s 2025 smartphone lineup marks the debut of Galaxy AI, a suite of software features designed to make your device smarter, more helpful and more personalised. Hardware improvements matter, but many of the year’s most significant advancements stem from artificial intelligence and machine learning. In this in‑depth article we explore the flagship AI features—Circle to Search, Now Brief and Cross‑App Action—and consider how they change the way you interact with your phone. We’ll look at real‑world use cases, discuss privacy considerations and offer tips to get the most out of Galaxy AI. By the end of this 1,000‑plus‑word deep dive, you’ll have a clear understanding of what Samsung’s AI can do and whether it’s worth upgrading for.

What Is Galaxy AI?

Galaxy AI is Samsung’s umbrella term for the smart software features built into its 2025 lineup. It’s not a single app but rather a collection of tools integrated into the operating system. The goal is to harness machine learning to anticipate your needs, simplify tasks and provide relevant information without additional effort. Samsung emphasises privacy, promising on‑device processing for sensitive data and optional cloud‑based enhancements for more advanced functions. Unlike voice assistants that require specific commands, Galaxy AI is designed to work quietly in the background, surfacing when it can truly help.

Circle to Search

Circle to Search is arguably the most visible component of Galaxy AI. Borrowing inspiration from Google’s Lens and adding a twist, Circle to Search allows you to highlight part of your screen—text, image or even a portion of a video—by simply drawing a circle around it with your finger or S Pen. Once highlighted, the phone uses visual recognition and contextual analysis to provide search results relevant to the selected item.

Practical examples illustrate its power. Imagine you’re watching a cooking video and see an unfamiliar spice jar. Instead of pausing, switching apps and typing a description into a search engine, you simply circle the jar, and the phone immediately identifies the spice, suggests where to buy it and offers recipes. For students, circling a mathematical formula can pull up explanations and step‑by‑step solutions. Fashion enthusiasts may spot a jacket on social media, circle it and find similar styles across multiple retailers. Circle to Search saves time by eliminating manual entry and understands context enough to provide targeted results.

Under the hood, the feature combines image recognition with natural language processing (NLP). When you draw a circle, the phone captures the underlying image pixels and runs them through a neural network trained to recognise objects. Simultaneously, it examines the surrounding text or spoken words to determine the context, refining the search results. Samsung works closely with search partners to ensure results are up to date and relevant.

Now Brief

Modern phones bombard us with notifications—messages, emails, news alerts and social media updates. Now Brief aims to reduce notification fatigue by summarising what matters most. Instead of dozens of separate alerts, Now Brief scans incoming information and presents a concise digest. The feature uses sentiment analysis and content classification to determine priority. Important emails, calendar events and urgent messages rise to the top, while promotional emails and less pressing notifications are summarised or suppressed.

The Now Brief feed appears on your lock screen or within the notifications panel, giving you a snapshot of your day. For instance, you might see: “3 emails from your manager need attention,” “Meeting with Design Team in 30 minutes,” “Package delivered,” and “5 low‑priority social updates.” Tapping any summary expands it into the full message. You remain in control—you can customise which apps feed into Now Brief and adjust sensitivity. For security, sensitive information from messaging apps can be hidden until the phone authenticates your identity via face or fingerprint.

Perhaps most impressive is how Now Brief learns over time. If you consistently open notifications from a particular app or contact, the system adjusts its importance. If you frequently dismiss certain alerts, Now Brief moves them to the bottom. It can even group related notifications by topic; for example, grouping shipping updates from online retailers or comments on your latest Instagram post. The result is a calmer, less intrusive notification experience that surfaces what matters without unnecessary noise.

Cross‑App Action

The third pillar of Galaxy AI, Cross‑App Action, focuses on automation. Samsung observed that many tasks on a phone involve moving content from one app to another—copying an address from a text message into a map, saving images from an email to a note or creating calendar events from an email conversation. Cross‑App Action uses AI to recognise these patterns and offers one‑tap shortcuts to complete them.

Suppose you receive a restaurant recommendation in a messaging app. Cross‑App Action pops up a contextual suggestion: “Open in Maps?” Tap it, and your phone launches the mapping app with the address already entered. If a colleague sends you a document with a meeting date, Cross‑App Action can create a calendar event pre‑filled with time, participants and notes. For content creators, saving images to a cloud drive or uploading them to social media can be automated after recognising certain triggers. The goal is to reduce the friction between apps, turning a multi‑step process into a single tap.

Setting up Cross‑App Action is straightforward. During initial setup, your phone asks permission to monitor certain types of data—messages, emails and clipboard. You can opt out or restrict the monitoring scope. The AI learns your habits and surfaces suggestions discreetly in a small overlay that appears when relevant actions are available. You can accept or dismiss the suggestions; the more you interact, the better the AI becomes at predicting your needs.

Privacy and Data Security

Whenever AI is involved, questions arise about privacy and data security. Samsung acknowledges these concerns and emphasises a hybrid on‑device and cloud‑based approach. The phone processes as much data as possible locally, leveraging the powerful Snapdragon 8 Elite’s AI cores. This means sensitive information—personal messages, contact details, private photos—does not leave your device unless you explicitly enable cloud features. When cloud processing is required (for instance, for heavy image recognition tasks), data is anonymised and encrypted. Samsung also provides transparency tools that let you see what data is used and manage permissions.

It is worth noting that enabling features such as Circle to Search may require sending anonymised screenshots to Samsung’s servers to retrieve search results. If you prefer total offline privacy, you can disable cloud processing, but the AI functions may be limited. Samsung’s privacy dashboard in One UI 8 makes it easy to review settings and revoke permissions at any time.

Tips for Maximising Galaxy AI

To get the most out of Galaxy AI, consider the following tips:

1. Calibrate Now Brief early on. Spend the first few days adjusting notification priorities and teaching the system which alerts matter to you. This initial investment will pay off in more accurate summaries.
2. Use the S Pen for Circle to Search. While your finger works fine, the S Pen gives you more precision when highlighting objects or text. It also reduces smudges on the screen.
3. Customise Cross‑App Action triggers. Dive into settings to specify which actions you want to automate. If you frequently copy addresses or share images, ensure those toggles are enabled.
4. Review privacy settings. Decide whether you want data processed on‑device only or if you’re comfortable using cloud‑based enhancements. Adjust these settings under “Advanced Features → Galaxy AI.”
5. Update regularly. Samsung rolls out improvements to Galaxy AI through software updates. Keeping your device current ensures you have access to the latest features and security patches.

Final Thoughts

Samsung’s Galaxy AI is more than a marketing buzzword; it represents a significant step toward context‑aware smartphones that anticipate your needs. Circle to Search makes information retrieval fast and intuitive. Now Brief helps tame the chaos of notifications. Cross‑App Action reduces friction between applications, saving you precious time. The features work seamlessly and respect your privacy, though careful configuration is required to get the best experience. If you value convenience and productivity, Galaxy AI alone makes the S25 series and Z Fold 7 compelling options. As Samsung continues to refine its AI engine and partner with developers, the potential for smarter, more intuitive phones will only grow.