You told us: You aren't too enthusiastic about your phone's AI camera modes

Smartphones today come with a variety of AI camera modes. These special settings allow you to tweak the photos you capture by using different image processing techniques. For instance, some AI modes can help your phone automatically differentiate between the foreground and background in a scene. Some add more saturation to your images and some help take better low-light shots.

But with so many AI camera modes on offer today, are you actually using them on your devices? We asked our readers and here’s what they had to say.

Do you use your phone camera’s AI mode?

Results

Our poll ran across the Android Authority website, YouTube channel, and Twitter account. With a total of over 15,800 votes, the results are in and they show that our readers are not too enthusiastic about using AI camera modes on their phones.

53% of the respondents voted to say that they don’t use AI modes at all. 26.7% of the poll takers use them sometimes. Meanwhile, 19.98% said that they use AI modes on their phone’s camera all the time.

The discrepancy in the number of people that use AI modes and those that don’t decreases significantly if you consider only our website votes. There’s a difference of just 10% on that standalone poll between AI mode users and naysayers. Nevertheless, the larger sentiment suggests that folks would rather shoot normally than trust AI optimizers to click and enhance their images.

What you had to say

SicknessofChoice: I use it. I like the AI-enhanced photos better than the non-AI-enhanced ones. Though manual mode is awesome as well on my phone.

Yassin Maamoun: It’s on by default on my S20, I don’t really notice a difference so I leave it on.

Evie: The beauty effects look great if you don’t turn them up to 11! I’ve started using the standard OPPO filters to play with Xbox screenshots, there’s a really funky cyberpunk filter that is just gorgeous for cars.

Ihosvany Rodriguez: I use Pixel 4 XL’s night sight all the time not only at night. Pictures come out fantastic. I can’t sit for Pixel 6 Pro.

Patrick Mac: Most people use the default setting which has AI turned on. AI gives various prompts such as asking whether the user wants to turn on night mode or scene optimizer based on lighting and scene, I doubt most people who chose ‘NO’ know this.

EasyCare: No. If I want my photo to look nicer, I will edit it from the gallery.

Joe Black: It’s just auto mode with aggressive HDR, there is literally no reason to use it if auto mode works well. Plain PR sticker.

Tharun Namboothiri: if it works as advertised, we would definitely use it. But the reality is manual mode is always better than AI.

Yu producciones: LOL. You just made me realize I have that mode. What is it supposed to do? Never use it in my POCO X3.