YouTube turned 20 years old this year, because time is a nightmare with only oblivion as an escape. But that means a lot of the older stuff that was uploaded to YouTube is in pretty bad shape, compared to the HD and 4K video that’s now become the norm. Google has a plan to make it all look better with… take a guess. Yup, you got it. It’s “AI.”
“We’re also introducing a new AI-powered feature that automatically generates higher resolutions for videos,” says the YouTube blog. Initially, the program will only work on various TV platforms—smart TVs, set-top boxes like Roku or the Nvidia Shield, etc.—and only take lower-quality videos up to 1080p. But YouTube says the goal is to upscale videos from old-school standard definition all the way up to 4K. The upscaled videos will get a “super resolution” tag, as GSMArena reports.
If you know anything about how digital video works, alarm bells may be ringing in your head right now. Upscaling is not the same as, for example, remastering a film for a new Blu-ray release. In that process, new high-resolution digital scans are made of the original physical film, then carefully tuned to preserve its intended look and feel (with varying results). Upscaling, on the other hand, is essentially equivalent to blowing up each frame in Photoshop one by one, then adding some algorithmic processes to make it flow more smoothly.
Upscaling from DVD to 1080p or 1080p to 4K can look pretty good, at least if it’s done well. When it isn’t, the results are awful. And considering how poor YouTube’s generative “AI” systems are at the moment, and how poor compressed YouTube videos can look all on their own even when uploaded in 4K, I wouldn’t hold my breath on great results. Plus, I’d be shocked if this stays a TV-only feature for very long.
There’s a tiny bit of good news hidden in there: YouTube won’t be hard-converting the original video files to this AI-enhanced upscaled version, and the original resolution will be preserved… for now. Creators can opt out of the enhancements if they want to make sure viewers see the unmodified original, and viewers can also disable it on their end.