Sony AI Camera Assistant on Xperia 1 VIII: ugly filters

Sony’s AI Camera Assistant on the Xperia 1 VIII displays live alternate settings in the camera viewfinder before you take a photo, but after a week of hands-on testing the feature mostly produced heavy, Instagram-style edits and introduced performance problems. The assistant appears automatically in the default camera mode, can be turned off, and runs on a phone powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and large sensors across three rear lenses.

What is the AI Camera Assistant and how does it work?

The assistant is an AI-driven overlay inside the Xperia 1 VIII camera app that shows a small box in the viewfinder with what the photo would look like under alternate settings, and offers up to three alternate options you can swipe through or enable with a tap. It suggests adjustments before you take the shot rather than editing photos after the fact, it does not explain which edits it is applying, and it is not supported on the selfie camera. The Assistant will sometimes apply artificial bokeh, and Sony says it can suggest swapping between the phone’s three rear lenses or help find "the most photogenic angle," though the reviewer did not observe those lens-swap or angle suggestions.

How well does it perform on the Xperia 1 VIII?

The assistant’s suggestions are mostly aggressive tweaks to exposure, white balance, contrast and saturation, and they often make images worse rather than better. Dominic Preston found only a handful of photos worth keeping and just one or two that were credibly better than the original; the Assistant frequently pushed photos toward murky moody tones or blew highlights out, favored sepia and warmer white balance shifts, and often increased saturation to make colors "pop." It can sometimes brighten a subject while darkening a background, and occasionally applies a portrait-style blur, but these moments were rare.

The assistant’s behavior is inconsistent. It does not trigger on backlit scenes or bright lights, it often skips macro compositions, and similar subjects produced different sets of suggestions depending on minute changes in orientation. Running the Assistant added load to the phone: the Xperia 1 VIII already shows uneven performance and a propensity to overheat, and with the Assistant active the camera app opened slowly, froze or hung for several seconds when switching lenses or accessing suggestions, and crashed once during the reviewer’s testing. Turning the Assistant off appeared to alleviate those slowdowns.

Why it matters

Sony has built strong camera hardware into the Xperia 1 VIII, with large sensors across all three rear lenses and imaging quality the reviewer calls competitive with other phones at its elevated price point, the equivalent of $1,850, though the phone is not launching in the US. Embedding AI that reacts before a photo is taken, rather than teaching framing or offering post-shot edits, changes how users interact with capture. That choice matters because other implementations take different approaches: Google’s Camera Coach gives framing tips and lens advice, and Apple’s iOS 27 includes options that reframe or edit images after capture. Sony’s Assistant does not explain its changes, so users do not learn what makes a photo better, and the live overlay can undermine the camera app’s responsiveness on hardware that otherwise aims for flagship performance.

What to watch

Watch whether the Assistant begins to reliably suggest lens swaps and "most photogenic angles," features Sony claims but the reviewer did not see. Also watch for changes to when and how suggestions are applied, and whether Sony adds clearer explanations of edits instead of only offering pre-shot, filter-like options.

"I’m sorry Sony, your AI isn’t very good at photography," the reviewer concluded after a week with the phone, summarizing the core problem: promising hardware paired with an assistant whose live, heavy-handed suggestions mostly degrade images.