- Sony has published an advertisement for the Xperia 1 VIII’s AI Camera Assistant tool
- But all images using this feature look worse than the “before” shots.
- It’s unclear how this could have happened without Sony noticing.
AI is a controversial tool, but even those against the technology would probably admit that it has some utility. One such use case is improving photographs, but Sony’s recent attempt to publicize AI’s abilities in this area has backfired.
You see, the Sony Xperia 1 VIII has just launched with an ‘AI Camera Assistant’ tool that, on paper, sounds promising. It can make suggestions about settings you might want to change, such as exposure, bokeh, and color, depending on what you’re aiming with the viewfinder, to get the best version of a photo. Except your suggestions are apparently absolutely terrible.
In a post on X, the The official Sony
The new AI Camera Assistant* with Xperia Intelligence brings stories to life. Using your subject, scene and weather, it suggests expressive options with color, exposure, bokeh and lens adjustments for stunning photos*. #Xperia1VIII pic.twitter.com/1dsBeCNvhEMay 14, 2026
An accident or an intentional bet?
Even if the feature is really that bad, it’s strange for Sony to highlight its flaws in this way, which is why there’s some debate online about what’s going on. CEO of nothing Carl Pei even chimed in and suggested, “This must be compromise farming?” But if so, it’s quite a gamble given how terrible this makes the feature look.
Other responses described the results as “horrible” and noted that “all the originals look better”, and one poster said: “If this is intelligence, I’d rather my phone was dumb.” Another simply asks: “Is this satire?”
The response is almost universally negative, and it seems hard to believe that Sony hasn’t realized that tight photos look worse. But it’s also hard to imagine the company intentionally posting bad images to drive engagement.
Perhaps, then, the before and after shots were accidentally mislabeled, but the post has been up for quite some time, so you’d think it would have been deleted if that were the case.
We’ll be interested in trying out the AI Camera Assistant feature 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 avoid.
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