Huawei caught using stock images to promote smartphone's camera

New marketing for Huawei's upcoming P30 smartphone has been caught trying to pass stock images as photos taken by the product's camera.

Last Friday, Huawei's CEO for its consumer business group, Richard Yu, posted a collection of sample images for the upcoming phone through his account on Sina Weibo, a popular social networking service in China. All nine ads hyped up the P30's camera by featuring individual images presumably taken by the phone and it's powerful "periscope zoom" camera.

However, a few users noticed the sample images appeared to be too good to be true. It turns out they were right. At least three of the pictures are up for sale through suppliers of stock imagery.

One of the photos, which features a young child and three ducklings, was actually taken four years ago by photographer Jake Olson. In an email, Olson told PCMag that Huawei didn't get permission to use his photo, but he said the picture was likely made available on Getty Images.

So far, Huawei hasn't commented on the stock image use, which was noticed by GSMArena. But it isn't the first time the company has been caught passing off professional-grade photos as smartphone-taken images. In 2016, users noticed a promotional image for the company's P9 handset actually contained some EXIF metadata that indicated the photo was taken by an expensive DSLR-camera.

Two years later, the company committed the same blunder, specifically in Egypt. Through an Instagram post, a Huawei-hired actress accidentally revealed that the company had used a DSLR camera to take a still shot that ended up in the TV commercial to promote its Nova 3 handset. (In its defense, Huawei noted the ad did show a short disclaimer that stated the product images and content were provided for reference only.)