Early reactions to Nvidia’s DLSS 5 were swift and skeptical, with some observers likening the technology to an Instagram-style filter applied over gameplay footage. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang refuted the allegations, but subsequent clarifications have helped outline how the system actually works – and where it can fall short.
Haven’t you heard? Everything must contain generative AI now.
DLSS stands for “deep learning super scaling.” It was always gen-ai. Those extra details weren’t being revealed, they were being generated.
While true, the way DLSS 2/3/4 does it is to take a bunch of low res renders of the game over time while wiggling the camera very slightly, and stitch them all together to generate a new, higher res image that very closely matches what the original would have looked like. The GenAI part is essentially just a very advanced temporal blending function that’s really good at detecting and smoothing out edges.
DLSS 5 then runs an AI Instagram filter on top of the frame for “enhanced visuals”, because obviously we want our games to look like cheap AI slop.