Xperia 1 VIII’s AI Camera Assistant promo has fans wondering if Sony is trolling itself [U]

Update 16/05/26 – 09:59 am (IST): Sony has officially responded to the backlash via X, clarifying how the AI Camera Assistant actually functions. According to the company, the feature doesn’t apply a post-processing edit to your photos. Instead, it analyzes the scene and subject to suggest four different settings based on various “creative directions,” allowing users to choose an option or stick to their own manual settings.

While this clears up the mechanics of the feature, it hasn’t done much to stop the roasting in the replies. Users are still left wondering why Sony’s marketing team decided to showcase the absolute worst suggestions for their primary comparison images.

Original article published on May 14, 2026, follows:

Sony’s marketing for the Xperia 1 VIII is getting mocked online, and honestly, it’s not hard to see why.

The company launched the Xperia 1 VIII earlier this week, pitching it as a flagship built around creativity and Sony’s legacy in imaging. On its official product page, Sony shows off a new feature called AI Camera Assistant, which it says “suggests various expressive options with different adjustments to create memorable photos.” That sounds good on paper.

The problem is the comparison images they chose to show it off.

Side-by-side shots on Sony’s website and the company’s social media accounts, like X and Instagram, show the “Original” photo next to the “AI Camera Assistant” version. In almost every case, the AI version looks noticeably worse. Washed out. Overexposed. Flatter colors. One shot of a woman standing in a golden field looks genuinely pretty good in the original. The AI version looks like someone cranked the brightness and forgot to stop.

Here are the three images being compared:

Users on r/SonyXperia were quick to notice. One post simply asked, “This must be a joke right?” It now has a few comments, most of them variations of the same disbelief.

“Sony: AI is bad, look how bad AI makes the photo,” one user wrote. Another suggested the social media team was told by management to run the comparisons without anyone actually looking at which photo was which.

Even under the official post on X, multiple users have highlighted the problem with the AI Camera Assistant samples.

From what I could tell, there’s a real possibility that Sony may have accidentally swapped which photos were labeled “Original” and which were labeled “AI Camera Assistant.” The AI versions are uniformly brighter and more aggressive in tone, which would make sense as a stylistic filter, but not as something you’d hold up as a selling point next to a well-exposed original.

If the samples are accurate, though, it’s a pretty clear signal to just turn the feature off. That said, the demonstration of the AI Camera Assistant in the product video does seem to fare better.

Sony is a company with genuine camera credibility. Its Alpha lineup is respected by professional photographers. The Xperia line itself carries technology from that same division, and the 1 VIII ships with a new telephoto sensor that’s nearly four times larger than the previous model. 

So Sony has clearly upgraded the hardware. Which makes the AI Camera Assistant rollout all the more baffling. This is a brand that knows cameras better than almost anyone in consumer electronics, and yet the feature they chose to anchor a big part of their marketing around is currently being called sabotage, a joke, and a lazy filter preset by the people most likely to buy the phone.

Sony hasn’t responded publicly. For now, the comparisons are still up on the site.

We stand out from the tech-media crowd because we break news stories; we mainly bring you stuff that you won’t find anywhere in the mainstream tech media. Our stories have been picked up by some of the world’s most popular websites and media outlets—more info is available here.