AI Could Ruin Your iPhone's Photo Quality

The iPhone's camera is famous for its realistic quality. Photo: Cnet .

Artificial intelligence is quickly creeping into every aspect of everyday phones, and cameras are no exception. Phone makers are already leveraging AI as a key feature for photography, with the Honor 400 Pro turning photos into videos right in the editing software.

Meanwhile, the Pixel 9 Pro focuses on generative AI, allowing it to add new elements to photos or even create entirely new scenes. Competitors have launched many powerful AI features, causing Apple to be considered lagging in the AI race on smartphones, according to Forbes.

However, AI is sometimes just a point that mobile phone companies rely on to compensate for other shortcomings. CNET technology reporter Andrew Lanxon thinks that the new generative AI engine of the Pixel 9 Pro line is the highlight of the upgrade, rather than the real improvements in photography.

He also liked the Xiaomi 14 Ultra's camera with its variable aperture, which created beautiful flashes of light when shooting at night. However, the newer 15 Ultra model has removed that feature in favor of focusing on software functionality, making the experience less than what it was before.

Meanwhile, Apple's iPhone has long impressed with its natural color reproduction and its light-weight image processing, resulting in realistic photos. The device offers sharpness that is almost equivalent to a professional camera, but is much more compact for those who like to work with images.

Apple has invested in core technologies to improve image quality, rather than simply using AI to compensate for hardware weaknesses. Apple’s ProRaw image formats and ProRes and Log video encodings are all aimed at getting the most out of the camera. “That’s what has won the hearts of creatives around the world ,” Lanxon writes.

Previously, Apple pioneered the use of machine learning for Deep Fusion technology, which captures multiple layers of images with different exposures and combines them into a single evenly lit photo. At a more granular level, the Portrait Lighting tool on the iPhone 8 uses depth maps and algorithms to create artificial lighting effects.

These tools, Lanxon says, are meant to improve the already good image quality offered by the hardware. He’s just concerned that the next iPhone will focus too much on generative AI, simulating entirely new scenes, losing the beauty of reality.

Film cameras always have a place in the hearts of photography enthusiasts. Photo: Cnet.

On the other hand, the growing popularity of dedicated compact cameras like the Fujifilm X100 VI and the trend of film photography show that realistic images still have a place in the creative world. For example, a seascape with a real sunset, not an AI-generated version.

Recently, Apple has introduced many AI features such as Clean Up to remove objects from photos, Visual Intelligence to analyze images through the camera, translation capabilities, email/safari summaries, and image generation tools such as Genmoji, Image Playground. The company's next event in September is expected to be related to this technology.

As Apple continues to push its AI strategy, more changes are likely to come, potentially involving the photography experience. However, many, including experts, are advising that this should not happen at the expense of core image quality.

Source: https://znews.vn/ai-co-the-pha-hong-chat-luong-chup-anh-cua-iphone-post1572650.html