I have no experience with SonarQube. I guess it's like a linter that's slightly higher level? In that case I'd guess the appeal is that it's reducing the cost of often repeated analysis that is usually done manually, not that the tool itself would make your code great to read.

If that's what it is then I think such tools are "a good servant but a bad master". It does not replace manual analysis, but can be used well to reduce costs of removing common code smells. It still requires a human to work as a judge.