Frandroid captured the solar eclipse on August 12, 2026, using four different smartphones to compare the image quality of each device. During this process, an anomaly was found in one of the images from the Xiaomi 17 Ultra, where lunar craters and terrain were rendered onto the reddish-orange portion of the sun.
Xiaomi 17 Ultra AI Mistakenly Renders Moon Craters on Sun During Solar Eclipse
This article is a translation. Read the Japanese original
According to the article, recent high-end smartphones utilize AI trained on lunar images to reconstruct craters and terrain to improve image quality when photographing the moon with digital zoom exceeding 100x. Frandroid analyzed that the Xiaomi 17 Ultra employs this mechanism and erroneously applied the moon rendering process to the sun under the conditions of the solar eclipse.
The article noted that Samsung's Space Zoom mode also fails during solar eclipses due to similar AI processing, suggesting that the Xiaomi case is not an issue limited to a single model. It was reported that not every photo taken by the Xiaomi device suffered from this malfunction, although multiple similar images have been shared on X.
Sources: Eclipse: The Xiaomi 17 Ultra Confuses the Moon and the Sun (HN 87pt, 86 comments) (HN Search (backfill), 2026-08-14)