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 details The worst photos taken on a Sony camera in years. These weren’t just photos, though: they were taken with Sony’s new AI Camera Assistant. After a week with the Xperia 1 VIII, I’m here to tell you that the AI ​​assistant is exactly as bad as Sony made it out to be.

When Sony first showed me the AI ​​Camera Assistant at the Xperia 1 VIII press conference, I did it looks like “an advanced version of Google Camera Coach.” It is clear that I am wrong. Camera Coach, available on the latest Pixel phones, is a dedicated camera system that talks you through the process of taking a shot, asking you what you want to focus on and giving specific advice on framing, stopping, using the camera lens, and whether or not to use Portrait mode. I found it disappointing when I read it Pixel 10Abut it works as a beginner drawing teacher.

Sony’s AI Camera Assistant is different. It’s integrated directly into the camera app’s default mode, and automatically pops up when you’re trying to take a picture – although Sony lets you turn it off. When you try to take a photo, a small box pops up in the viewfinder showing how the photo would look with Sony’s AI settings. A quick tap activates the settings, or you can swipe to check the other three options.

Concepts appear before you take a picture – this is not an update to pictures you’ve already taken. Unlike Google’s Camera Trainer, Assistant doesn’t offer advice on framing or focus, it just applies a filter and leaves the rest up to you. It doesn’t tell you what it’s using, so you won’t learn anything about why the image looks the way it does or how to improve it yourself.

Ideas are not always visible. 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 rear window usually doesn’t bring any AI feedback, and neither does staring at a blank wall. It doesn’t tend to offer large screen options, but sometimes it does. If I try to take a picture of my hand, the AI ​​assistant has many ideas; if I turn my hand to the side or back, the options disappear. If there is a point being made here, I can’t tell you what it is.

Most of the changes that AI Assistant shows are changes to exposure, brightness, contrast, and other basic changes – and often aggressive changes, at that. Sometimes it can make an image look dark and blurry, other times it just adds highlights until it’s blown out beyond recognition. It tends to show a sepia effect, or shift whites to yellow to create a warm final image. Usually there is one way with the saturation being pushed up to make everything visible.

Beyond color and texture adjustments, the AI ​​Assistant sometimes helps to create bokeh, hiding the background as much as possible. In its smartest moments, it can light up the subject of a photo, and darken the background, helping them stand out. Sony says It can show you how to switch between the phone’s three rear lenses or help you find the “smallest looking one,” although after a week of testing I didn’t see this happen once.

Do you know where else we’ve seen results like this? Instagram. It has had photo filters for 16 years, only its filters have been more subtle than this. The most surprising thing is that, like most phones, the Xperia also has filters – as many as five, including a screen film and a clear screen. The main difference is that instead of providing previews, the AI ​​Camera Assistant seems to be processing the scene, subject, and lighting to show the best changes at that moment – that’s AI for all of that. In theory it’s not such a bad idea, in practice the actual results make it unusable.

The contributor has only produced a few images that I feel are worth keeping, fewer than are worth sharing on social media, and one or two that claim to be better than the original. I’ve found that it becomes more useful as the lighting increases, as the camera settings become more complex. But even then, you’ll be lucky to have a photo or two worth capturing.

This is not a camera problem. While I wouldn’t say the Xperia 1 VIII has the best camera in a smartphone right now, it’s a good one. With big sensors on all three rear lenses it has hardware that surpasses Apple and Google, and a different, slightly different style, which I really like. These are Sony’s best Xperia camera yetand to compete with other phones at its higher price point – equivalent to $1,850, although the phone did not actually launch in the US. It’s that quality elsewhere that makes the AI ​​assistant so interesting.

It’s Sony’s idea to make up its own mind already you take the picture, not later, it seems to have had an unacceptable effect on performance. Even using the flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5The Xperia 1 VIII runs wild at the best of times, and has a tendency to overheat. The speed of the AI ​​Camera Assistant seems to increase the difficulty. The camera app often opens slowly, and can freeze or hang for a few seconds while you’re changing lenses, getting AI suggestions, or taking a photo. The entire camera fell once while I was writing this article. Turning off the camera assist seems to have alleviated the problems.

Maybe we should be grateful. Sony’s attempt to inject AI into its camera doesn’t include editing images, enhancing images to include information that wasn’t there, or re-creating the actual shot — all of it is included. The latest version of Apple iOS 27. Unlike AI options, and many others from Google and Samsung, the Sony AI Camera Assistant does not raise unpleasant questions about the image. and. It just makes me wonder if anyone on the Sony Xperia team knows what makes a picture nice.

Photography by Dominic Preston/The Verge