Whether you like it or not, AI features are inevitable in any camera phone you buy today. From budget shooters to premium flagships, generative AI has become so omnipresent that we’ve reached a crisis point where we need to question whether the images we take truly represent what we actually see. But I digress. What deserves an immediate, unfiltered rant is the launch of Sony’s latest flagship camera phone, the Xperia 1 VIII.
On paper, it should be a triumph, a solid specced shooter from a tech giant that manufactured cameras like the Sony Alpha mirrorless lineup used by professional photographers worldwide. But the new AI Camera Assistant feature, which is meant to “bring your story to life” and create the “most memorable photos ever”, according to Sony, has left people who’ve seen it dumbfounded.
Using subject, scene and weather recognition alongside colour, exposure, bokeh, and lens suggestions to tweak your shots, the “after” images in their side-by-side comparisons look worse than the originals. Like you gave a reverse prompt: Could you make this image look less nice?
If you spend £1,400 on a smartphone, you expect its headline AI image enhancement features to, at the very least, understand basic exposure. Instead, Sony’s launch proved that some tech giants are hilariously unprepared to unleash the unbridled potential of AI on consumers. If you haven’t seen the full extent of the internet roasting them over the last few days, grab some popcorn, because it is spectacular.
In the promotional samples, the AI assistant’s “creative directions” consistently delivered overexposed, desaturated, out-of-focus, and aggressively over-edited results. Sony defended the images as “these are just examples, and that you can choose the result you like”, but it still begs the question, why did they choose those ones when they’re clearly so bad?
Commenters universally agreed that there was absolutely nothing wrong with the “before” images to begin with, and that the phone should have just left them alone.
“So bright it singed my eyeballs, just stick to the original. Its already great.” says Sherwin Kyle Jimenez
“I know where is this going, they’re trying to tell us that AI processing is a joke, so u can use the camera normally” says Mrhban Andri
The bottom line is that slapping the word AI enhancement onto every phone doesn’t automatically mean it takes better pictures. Sometimes, it just makes a £1,400 flagship look like it forgot how to take a well-balanced exposure. Sony didn’t need a top-of-the-line Qualcomm processing unit to overexpose a photo; a toddler with a brightness slider could have achieved the exact same result.
Head over to have a look for yourself on Sony Xperia’s Facebook page.
Related reading:
- Opinion: Why is Sony so bad at making smartphones?
- Sony Xperia 1 VII now has an updated, larger sensor ultra-wide camera
- Sony Xperia 10 V Review – Sony’s cheapest phone
The views expressed in this column are not necessarily those of Amateur Photographer magazine or Kelsey Media Limited. If you have an opinion you’d like to share on this topic, or any other photography related subject, email: [email protected]
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