I have this problem too with my 12 Pro Max, but everyone does. Apple calls it "computational photography", or deep fusion, and/or any other blitz of marketing names they've come up with in recent years. They've published white papers about it.
Gone are the days when you point an iPhone at a photo, snap, and actually get THAT photo. The same thing is happening with all smartphones. In Apple's case, what we're getting instead is a processed version of that photo through Apple's imaging pipeline that's making any number of adjustments to the photo before it appears on your screen. Some of these features can be turned off in Settings > Camera. Others cannot.
Some people love what these imaging processing features do because their photos just magically "look better". I personally hate it, because I'm a photographer who fusses over details, exposure, color tone, shadow detail, etc, and I don't want Apple's version of my photo....I want my version of the photo. In particular, skin tones and skies (under certain circumstances) look horrible on the 12 Pro Max with the latest iOS version. Simply awful. e.g., Whatever this camera is doing to skin tones indoors in lower light is dreadful. They're tone mapping the faces to the point where any skin tone nuances are obliterated and the people look uniformly pasty and fake.
The solution to this is simple: Apple should give people who want it the control to turn off most of what they're auto-doing to our photos. They do give you some control in Settings > Camera, but it's not nearly enough. There should be a setting called 'Realistic' that just gives me what the camera's image sensor is seeing, with zero processing. That's what photographers want out of iPhone cameras.
I used to buy new iPhones every two years hoping for camera upgrades that actually help me as a photographer. Typically, Apple has succeeded with that in the past. But now...with computational photography...Apple is going in the complete wrong direction for certain photo situations and I will be much more careful when buying new iPhones to evaluate the camera more carefully in all types of lighting before I just jump on board with an upgrade. Caveat emptor!