Nvidia's DLSS has been a boon for those of us who hang on to old GPUs for longer than game developers want to support them, but a problem with AI upscaling is that its inferences subtly alter the look of games.
With DLSS 5, Nvidia has dropped the subtlety and made overwriting the original graphics the point, using "3D-guided neural rendering" to enhance traditionally-rendered graphics—or ruin them, depending on your perspective.
DLSS 5 was introduced at Nvidia GTC today with a video showing how it can transform real-time graphics on the fly, putting a photoreal sheen on games like Resident Evil: Requiem and Hogwarts Legacy. Digital Foundry also has a deeper dive into the tech.
Article continues belowNvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said that the generative AI is "controlled perfectly" by the structured data provided by the 3D renderer, and according to Nvidia's Jacob Freeman, developers "have artistic control over DLSS 5's effects to ensure they maintain their game's aesthetic." But even in Nvidia's demonstration, the source material is altered in ways don't seem in keeping with the designs of the underlying 3D models.
Grace Ashcroft's face, for instance, doesn't just look like it's lit more realistically: She's given fuller lips and sharper cheek bones in the transformation, demonstrating an apparent bias for a certain beauty standard trained into the AI model.
I've watched the video several times to try to determine if I'm just misinterpreting a lighting change as a structural change to the character, but every time I rewatch the transition, I see a substantially altered face, one way or another. We've seen this 'yassification' effect—to use the modern parlance—from other AI models.
As with everything AI, DLSS 5 has instantly been controversial, with the term "AI slop filter" showing up on social media within minutes of the announcement.
Exactly how much control game developers will really have over DLSS 5 is to be seen—and they can choose not to support it—but that seems like a small detail against the bigger trend here. As Dave predicted in 2024, we're heading toward a world where players and tech companies have the final say in what videogames look like, not their creators.
NVIDIA: What if we introduce ray tracing so you can have really high quality real-time lighting, models that cast shadows on themselves, and game lighting that looks _really_ real? Also NVIDIA: What if we do that, and then throw out that lighting to run the yassify filter so everyone looks HOT?
— @willsmith.fun (@willsmith.fun.bsky.social) 2026-03-16T21:28:12.033Z
Above: One example of the social media reaction to DLSS 5, from Tested co-founder Will Smith.
To some degree that's already true on PC, where it's possible to adjust graphics settings and use mods to transform a game's style, but AI-assisted rendering now presents a big-tech controlled shortcut that could radically influence how game art and creative ownership are perceived in the future.
DLSS 5 is arriving in the fall, and a few of the games that will support it off the bat are Assassin's Creed Shadows, Hogwarts Legacy, Phantom Blade Zero, Resident Evil Requiem, Sea of Remnants, Starfield, The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered, and Where Winds Meet.
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