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Samsung\u2019s launch film for the new Portable SSD P9, a drive the company pitches at professional production workflows and 12K direct recording, carries a small on-screen disclosure throughout its entire runtime that reads \u201cThis content is created using generative AI\u201d. So the drive that is supposed to hold your footage is being sold with footage nobody shot.<\/p>\n
The product itself is not the issue here, so I will keep this short. The\u00a0P9<\/a>\u00a0is Samsung\u2019s new flagship portable SSD, and the\u00a0official press release<\/a>\u00a0positions it squarely at professional production workflows, up to and including 12K RAW direct recording, with Samsung\u2019s own product page noting that claim was tested on a Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro 12K<\/a>. My colleague Johnnie went through the full specifications, capacities and pricing in his\u00a0announcement article<\/a>\u00a0a few days ago, so head there for the details. The short version is that this is a drive built and priced for working filmmakers, which is precisely why the campaign around it deserves a closer look.<\/p>\n The part we missed, and you didn\u2019t<\/p>\n A quick word on our own coverage first. Johnnie\u2019s news piece focused on the drive, the specs and the pricing, which is what it should do, but in hindsight it should also have mentioned that the launch campaign is AI-generated, because that is relevant context for exactly the readers the product is aimed at. Several of you raised it in the comments under our Instagram and Facebook posts, and you were right to. So this piece picks up where the news article left off.<\/p>\n Before we dive into this mess, take your own look at their campaign video below. <\/p>\n Philip Bloom flagged the same thing on Threads<\/a>, and he was, as usual, less diplomatic about it than a press release would like. He was not the only one. There were AI-generated press stills that accompanied the announcement, with garbled pseudo-captions the image generator had hallucinated into the pictures, including \u201ctalephoto\u201d and \u201cvulture cirsting\u201d. <\/p>\n Another commentator wrote that if Samsung cannot be bothered to photograph its own product in use, customers cannot be bothered to pay for it. Samsung\u2019s Australian newsroom quietly labels one of the launch images \u201cImage simulated for illustrative purposes\u201d, and a syndicated product page carries the fuller disclaimer that the scene is AI-generated to show context, with the drive itself coming from a real photo whose scale and small features may have been altered by AI. So the stills are AI, the video is AI, and the only thing in the entire campaign that was ever in front of a real lens is the SSD.<\/p>\n This is where the irony stops being funny. Samsung\u2019s marketing copy for the P9 says that \u201cAt the edge of your world, failure isn\u2019t an option\u201d, and the press release from Tommy Kwon, Vice President and Head of Brand Product Biz Team, frames the drive around the data demands of \u201cAI-powered content creation and ultra-high-resolution video\u201d. Read that again. The stated use case is a cinematographer on location filling a drive with 12K RAW, and the ad selling that use case was made without a cinematographer, a location, a camera, a gaffer, a grip, a sound recordist, a colorist, or a single frame of 12K RAW. If the film in the ad had been shot for real, it would have needed the very product it is advertising. Instead, the entire thing probably fits on a USB stick.<\/p>\n I am not a purist about generative AI. I gave a whole\u00a0presentation on AI workflows for filmmakers<\/a>\u00a0at BILD Expo, and we have an entire MZed course,\u00a0Directing the Future<\/a>, dedicated to using these tools ethically. Previsualization, pitch decks, storyboards, cleanup, even the occasional generated plate: fine. But there is a difference between a filmmaker using AI as a tool and a hardware manufacturer using AI to avoid hiring filmmakers, and then pointing that output at filmmakers and asking for $2,699.99 for the 8TB model. Samsung did not use generative AI to tell a story it could not otherwise tell. It used it to skip the production budget on a product whose entire reason for existing is production.<\/p>\n Samsung knows what a real filmmaker looks like<\/p>\n What makes this sting is that Samsung has form here, and good form. In 2023 the company hired Ridley Scott to direct\u00a0Behold<\/a>, a short shot on the Galaxy S23 Ultra with cinematographer Flavio Labiano in a Marseille housing estate, with VFX by Untold Studios and a real crew. Before that, Charlie Kaufman shot Jackals and Fireflies on the S22 Ultra, and Joe Wright made a puppetry short on the S21 Ultra. Samsung understood, correctly, that if you want to convince image-makers your product belongs in their bag, you show them what image-makers can do with it. In the making-of for Behold, Scott even said that \u201cthis small object is going to take the place of all the big cameras\u201d. It turns out the phone was not the thing Samsung had in mind for replacing the cameras.<\/p>\n There is also the small matter of May 2024, when Samsung answered Apple\u2019s widely disliked \u201cCrush!\u201d iPad ad with a spot declaring that creativity cannot be crushed:<\/p>\n Less than two years later, the Galaxy S26 launch campaign was built on AI-generated clips carrying a \u201cgenerated with the assistance of AI tools\u201d disclaimer, and the response under the videos was brutal. Creative Bloq\u2019s roundup led with a reader asking \u201cSamsung really?! AI slop to show your new Ultra camera night time performance?\u201d and SamMobile, a site that exists to like Samsung products, ran an opinion piece calling the irony of the AI ad blitz stunning. The P9 campaign looks less like a misjudgment by one storage division and more like company policy.<\/p>\n The industry this ad is talking to is shrinking<\/p>\n None of this would matter much if it were only a question of taste. It is not. At the DGA Awards in February, guild president Christopher Nolan said directors\u2019 employment was down<\/a> about 40 percent in 2024, with a further decline in 2025, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter. Commercial production, the bread and butter for a huge number of DPs, gaffers and editors between narrative jobs, is exactly the segment brands are handing to generative pipelines first, and Coca-Cola, McDonald\u2019s Netherlands and Toys R Us have all taken their turn in front of the firing squad for it. Samsung is now selling a professional recording medium to the exact workforce whose day rates it just decided not to pay, and doing so with a straight face.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Samsung-AI-SSD-Ad-900x506.jpg\")
AI-generated still from Samsung\u2019s P9 SSD campaign. Image credit: Samsung \u2026 or ChatGPT?Who exactly is supposed to fill 8TB?<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Samsung-AI-SSD-Ad-02-900x504.jpg\")
Still from Samsung\u2019s fully AI-generated SSD ad. Fake people pointing at nothing. Image credit: Samsung\u2026 or ChatGPT?What Samsung could have done instead<\/p>\n