Sony’s explanation for its embarrassing AI photos just leaves more questions

You may have seen it by now, but Sony managed to bring the internet together to dunk on its new AI Camera Assistant feature for the recently launched Xperia 1 VIII. The disbelief in the marketing was so great that it had everyone from Carl Pei to Marques Brownlee making jokes. After the intense backlash, Sony has now offered a response.

If you haven’t been keeping up with the situation, Sony recently attempted to show off what its AI Camera Assistant is capable of. To do this, the company shared side-by-side comparisons, featuring the original photo and one of the four suggestions offered by the tool. However, in every instance, the AI suggestion looked noticeably worse than the original.

To Sony’s credit, it has not deleted the pictures, and the company decided not to remain silent. Over on X, the tech giant has provided a response that includes new examples and a deeper explanation of what AI Camera Assistant does. Sony states:

Following the post about AI Camera Assistant, we’d like to explain the feature in more detail. It doesn’t edit photos after shooting – it suggests 4 settings in different creative directions based on the scene and subject. You can choose any option or use your own settings.

Meanwhile, the new examples do admittedly look better this time around. These suggestions don’t look washed out or overexposed like the first set of pictures did. You can check them out below.

However, this response still leaves some questions about Sony’s imaging judgment. For example, why did Sony decide to use those initial images for its marketing? Does Sony really think that those initial photos look better than the originals? It’s all a bit worrying, considering that Sony is a company that’s well known for its cameras.