Sony’s AI camera assistant is exactly as bad as it sounds

When Sony announced the Xperia 1 VIII last month, it promoted the phone by sharing some features The worst photos taken with a Sony camera in years. However, these weren’t just photos: they were captured using Sony’s new AI camera assistant. After a week of using the Xperia 1 VIII, I’m here to tell you that the AI ​​assistant is every bit as bad as Sony makes it out to be.

After Sony first showed me the AI ​​camera assistant during the Xperia 1 VIII press conference, I said It looked like an “improved version of Google Camera Coach.” It’s pretty clear I got that wrong. Camera Coach, found on the latest Pixel phones, is a dedicated camera mode that walks you through framing your shot, asking you what you want to focus on and offering specific advice on framing, positioning, which camera lens to use, and whether or not to use portrait mode. I found it disappointing when I checked Pixel 10abut clearly serves as a basic photography instructor.

Sony’s AI Camera Assistant is different. It’s built right into the camera app’s default mode, and pops up automatically while you’re trying to take a photo — though Sony allows you to turn it off entirely. As you try to take a photo, a small box appears in the viewfinder showing what the photo would look like with alternative settings suggested by Sony’s AI. A quick tap enables these settings, or you can swipe down to cycle through three more alternative options.

Suggestions appear before you actually take the shot, and this isn’t intended for editing photos you’ve already taken. Unlike Google’s Camera Coach, Assistant doesn’t give any advice on framing or focus, it just applies a filter and leaves the rest to you. It doesn’t even tell you what effects are being applied, so you won’t learn anything about why the image looks the way it does or how to achieve the effect yourself.

Suggestions don’t appear consistently. It’s not supported at all on the selfie camera, though I don’t know why. Pointing the camera directly at a bright light or a backlit window typically doesn’t trigger any AI suggestions, nor does looking at a blank wall. It doesn’t tend to offer options for macro shots, but it does sometimes. If I try to take a photo of my palm, the AI ​​assistant has a lot of ideas; If I turn my hand to the side or back, these options disappear. If there is a logic being followed here, I can’t tell you what it is.

The vast majority of the changes the AI ​​Assistant suggests are adjustments to exposure, white balance, contrast, and other basic image settings — and they’re usually aggressive tweaks. Sometimes, you’ll be suggested to darken the image until it becomes fuzzy and moody, and other times, you’ll brighten the image until it becomes unrecognizable. He likes to suggest a sepia effect, or move the white balance towards yellow to create a warmer final image. There’s usually at least one option with the saturation turned up to make everything pop.

In addition to color and exposure adjustments, the AI ​​assistant sometimes enables an artificial bokeh effect as well, blurring the background like in portrait mode. In more subtle moments, this might brighten the subject of the photo, while darkening the background, to help it stand out. Sony claims It can suggest switching between the phone’s three rear lenses or even help you find the “most flattering angle”, although after a week of testing, I’ve yet to see this happen once.

Do you know where else we’ve seen effects like this? Instagram. It’s had photo filters for 16 years, but its filters have only gotten more precise than this. What’s particularly strange is that, like most phones, the Xperia also has filters – a set of five filters, including a film simulation and a more vivid mode. The key difference is that instead of pre-suggesting specific images, the AI ​​camera assistant virtually reacts to the scene, subject, and lighting to dynamically suggest the best adjustments for that specific moment — that’s all AI. In theory, this is not the worst idea, but in practice the actual results make it unusable.

The assistant has only created a handful of images that I typically consider worth keeping, even fewer that are worth sharing on social media, and only one or two have a credible claim to being better than the original. I’ve found that it tends to be more useful the worse the lighting, simply because the default camera settings are more likely to struggle. But even here, you’ll be lucky to get a photo or two worth taking.

This is not the camera’s fault. While I wouldn’t say the Xperia 1 VIII has the best camera in a smartphone right now, it certainly has a good one. With large sensors across the three rear lenses, it has hardware that beats Apple’s and Google’s, and a premium processing style, with slightly boosted contrast, which I’m mostly a fan of. This is it The best Sony Xperia camera yetAnd it competes with other phones with its high price – the equivalent of $1,850, even though the phone was not actually launched in the United States. It’s that quality elsewhere that makes the AI ​​assistant even more confusing.

Sony’s decision to submit its suggestions before It appears that taking the photo, but not after it, had some undesirable effects on performance. Although the pioneer was used Snapdragon 8 Elite Generation 5The Xperia 1 VIII runs unevenly at the best of times, and tends to overheat. Turning on the AI ​​camera assistant seems to add more pressure. The Camera app often opens slowly, and can freeze or crash for several seconds at a time when switching lenses, accessing AI suggestions, or taking a photo. The entire camera broke down at once while I was writing this article. Turning off the camera assistant seems to have alleviated these issues.

Maybe we should be thankful. Sony’s attempt to introduce AI into its camera doesn’t just involve editing objects out of photos, expanding images to include details that aren’t there, or completely reworking real shots — all of that is built into New Apple update iOS 27. Unlike those AI options, and countless others from Google and Samsung, Sony’s AI camera assistant doesn’t raise any uncomfortable questions about what the photo is. He is. It makes me wonder if anyone on Sony’s Xperia team knows what makes a photo good.

Photography by Dominic Preston/The Verge