I don't know about this - RAW files are recordings of sensor values. Those sensor values are accurate of what light the sensor measured.
Then the sensor values are converted to a JPEG. So it's still an accurate rendition of the light - even though yes, it is a rendition of the light.
But to completely replace some sensor values with some computer-generated values is a different ballgame, IMO. It's more akin to Photoshop editing, as opposed to Lightroom.
This is really splitting hairs, but even our eyes are interpretation of reality.
The camera sensor does not record the wavelengths of lights it is capturing, only RGB values. We can only reproduce the picture in a way that is convincing to our eyes, not what light what original being captured.
The least that modern phone cameras do is to blend multiple RAW files into a single picture, to improve various metrics. That brings the risk of producing results like the one seen here.
I agree with your point, but just to be clear for people:
When you bring that RAW photo into something like Lightroom or Capture One they’re automatically applying a base curve to the photo before you do anything.
In Capture One you can set that to “flat” which I believe is fairly unprocessed, and it takes a lot of work to get it to a usable state from there. They also have other options, and they recently changed their default setting and it’s pretty incredible how different it is from their old default.
There definitely though is some magic-sauce when de-Bayering [1] the RAW data and then playing games with color spaces and color profiles to end up with that final JPEG.
I agree with your point though. I dislike "computational photography".
Then the sensor values are converted to a JPEG. So it's still an accurate rendition of the light - even though yes, it is a rendition of the light.
But to completely replace some sensor values with some computer-generated values is a different ballgame, IMO. It's more akin to Photoshop editing, as opposed to Lightroom.