- TalkBack’s new AI-powered image description feature won’t be available on Samsung phones and tablets.
- This feature uses Google’s Gemini AI to generate a description of images.
- Samsung devices don’t offer Google’s solution because Samsung has its own, competing TalkBack service.
To make Android more accessible to people with vision problems, Google created TalkBack, a screen reader service. Earlier today, the company announced an update to TalkBack that leverages its Gemini AI model to generate descriptions of images shown on screen. What Google didn’t mention in its announcement is the fact that this feature won’t be available on all Android devices — namely, those from Samsung.
TalkBack is part of the Android Accessibility Suite app, which is preloaded on most Android devices that bundle Google Mobile Services (GMS). However, it isn’t preloaded on Samsung Galaxy devices that run One UI, Samsung’s fork of Android. The reason why is because Samsung preloads its own suite of accessibility tools, which includes its own custom TalkBack service. Google lets OEMs skip out on preloading the Android Accessibility Suite so long as they include specific accessibility tools (like a screen reader) that meet certain criteria.