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...