The Lunar Lie: Why Xiaomi’s AI Hallucinations Render Hardware Specs Irrelevant

Let’s get one thing straight: I love a spec sheet. I live for the race toward higher zoom multipliers and larger sensors. But as a reviewer, there is a definitive line where 'computational photography' stops being a helpful tool and starts becoming a digital fabrication.

With the Xiaomi 17 Ultra, we have officially crossed that line.

As Frandroid first reported, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra recently participated in a real-world test during the solar eclipse of August 12, 2026. Frandroid put four different smartphones to the test to see which could handle the celestial event best. The results for the Xiaomi 17 Ultra were surreal: in at least one instance, the phone didn't just fail to capture the eclipse; it actively hallucinated a different celestial body entirely.

Specifically, Frandroid found that the Xiaomi 17 Ultra confused the Sun with the Moon. The resulting image showed a red-orange Sun that was inexplicably covered in craters, reliefs, and lines—details characteristic of the Moon, not the Sun.

In my opinion, this is a catastrophic failure of AI logic. We are being sold a dream of 'Ultra' photography, often bolstered by partnerships with specialists like Leica, but what we are actually getting is a device that guesses what it is looking at and then overlays a pre-baked texture to make the image look 'better' to the untrained eye.

Frandroid explains that this is part of a broader trend of 'cheating' among smartphone manufacturers. To make digital zooms (which can now reach x100 or even x120 in high-end models) look convincing, companies use artificial intelligence trained on images of the Moon. When the camera detects a circular object in the sky, the AI steps in to reconstruct details—like craters—that the lens didn't actually resolve.

While Frandroid notes that Xiaomi isn't alone—citing a previous 'lunar scandal' involving the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra—the Xiaomi 17 Ultra's failure is particularly egregious. It didn't just fail to capture a clear image; it forced a 'Moon rendering' onto the Sun.

Crucially, this wasn't an isolated incident. Frandroid reports that other users on X shared similar experiences. One user, Víctor Pérez (@vpx_tech), posted a photo noting that Xiaomi AI had turned his solar eclipse into a moon picture.

If the AI is so aggressive that it sees a red sun and thinks, 'Yes, this looks like a place for some craters,' then the hardware specs—the lenses, the sensors, the zoom levels—don't mean a damn thing. You aren't taking a photo; you're commissioning a piece of AI-generated art.