‘Is this satire?’: Sony comes under fire for ‘awful’ social media post showing the Xperia 1 VIII’s AI Camera Assistant tool making photos look worse

• Sony has posted an advert for the Xperia 1 VIII’s AI Camera Assistant tool
• But all the images using this feature look worse than the ‘before’ shots
• It’s unclear how this could have happened without Sony realizing

AI is a controversial tool, but even those against the technology would probably admit that it has some utility. One such use case is to improve photos, but Sony’s recent attempt to advertise AI’s skills in this area has very much backfired.

You see, the Sony Xperia 1 VIII has just launched with an ‘AI Camera Assistant’ tool, which, on paper, sounds promising. It can make suggestions about settings you might want to change, such as exposure, bokeh, and color, based on what you’re pointing the viewfinder at, in order to get the best version of a photo. Except, its suggestions are seemingly absolutely terrible.

In a post on X, the official Sony Xperia account has shown some before and after photos aimed at advertising the capabilities of this tool, but the improved shots basically just seem to be overexposed to ludicrous levels, washing out colors and details, and leaving the photos looking pale and unnatural.

An accident or an intentional gamble?

Even if the feature really is this bad, it’s bizarre that Sony would highlight its failings like this, so there’s some debate online about what’s going on. Nothing’s CEO Carl Pei even weighed in, suggesting “this must be engagement farming??” But if it is, it’s quite the gamble given just how terrible this makes the feature look.

Other replies have described the results as “awful” and noted that “all the originals look better”, with one poster saying, “If this is intelligence, I’d prefer my phone dumb.” Another simply asks, “Is this satire?”

The response is almost universally negative, and it seems hard to believe that Sony didn’t realize the adjusted photos look worse. But it’s also hard to imagine the company would intentionally post bad images for engagement.

Perhaps, then, the before and after shots have accidentally been mislabeled, but the post has been up for quite a while now, so you’d think it would have been taken down if that was the case.

We’ll be interested to give the AI Camera Assistant feature a try for ourselves when we get our hands on the Sony Xperia 1 VIII, but for now, based on Sony’s own images, it looks like something you might want to steer well clear of.

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James is a freelance phones, tablets and wearables writer and sub-editor at TechRadar. He has a love for everything ‘smart’, from watches to lights, and can often be found arguing with AI assistants or drowning in the latest apps. James also contributes to 3G.co.uk, 4G.co.uk and 5G.co.uk and has written for T3, Digital Camera World, Clarity Media and others, with work on the web, in print and on TV.