I reported that right after PL1 was introduced. First, I tried mail support, but after a while I moved to the forum. Unfortunately, that was the “old” forum which is not accessible any more.
After the change to the new forum, I commented that issue here:
https://forum.dxo.com/t/local-adjustments-in-new-photolab-1-2/3088
ALL other local adjustments clearly display the exact area and shape of any adjustments you may apply. “Auto mask” does not. You can see what was picked only if you apply adjustments. So the only way to get some feedback is to apply extreme adjustments just for testing, and then retry changing the auto mask until it picks the right parts of the image.
For a quick look at how this could be done better, see the Anthropics Smart Photo Editor which I already mentioned as reference.
But (to my knowledge) you can’t manually ADD something that was not picked by the automatic.
Teach me if I’m wrong - but AFAICT the behaviour of “auto mask” has not been changed since it was introduced two years ago. At least there’s no official statement about such a change.
However, I must confess that since it’s rather uncomfortable to use “auto mask” for the given reasons, I only (extremely) rarely use it. So it’s not impossible I missed something.