But I think the (depressing) truth of it is that I notice it because I've had fast lenses and spent a lot of time taking photos, so I know what natural looking bokeh looks like. And bokeh is also just an artifact of a lens and aperture combo, so who is to say that extreme blur with a sharp line as they are doing isn't just going to be the new standard?
I suspect the next generation will come to prefer this look (if it continues) and find the "natural" effect with real glass as weird.
There are many non-obvious issues with this as well. You're most likely thinking of, for example, an non-centered subject can create an interesting composition and algorithmically centering the subject would not create better looking photos.
However, in film's history, we've seen older technology briefly preferred for no other reason than momentum. An example off the top of my head is higher frame rate video does not have the "movie feel" that 24 fps film does. That doesn't mean 24 fps is ideal, its simply familiar.
I also don't know if Google actually consults with real photography experts when creating these machine learning techniques. Apple made a big deal out of doing that at the last event to create "beautiful photos". It's not enough to just "mathematically improve" something. It should look very pleasing to the human eye, too.
Perhaps if Google did that, too, it would have avoid issues such as this one, or the somewhat unrealistic look of its portrait mode blur in photos. It's hard to explain, but to me the Pixel 2 portrait shots look like the person doesn't "belong" in the environment. Like they have a linear-blur wallpaper behind them and they photograph themselves in front of it. Or almost like they are photoshopped into the image. I wouldn't say it's that bad. And a majority of people probably won't notice it immediately, but I still think it needs to be improved (perhaps, I don't know, by actually using a dual-camera setup like Apple and Samsung?).
https://www.gsmarena.com/google_pixel_2_xl-review-1670p4.php...