Nvidia’s DLSS 5 is like motion smoothing for video games, but worse
This “significant breakthrough” gives everything a special look that has become synonymous with AI-generated art. It’s a bit like motion smoothing, if motion smoothing went even further and changed people’s faces – and it makes everything the same.
It is important to note that the next time you play Requiem on PC, Grace won’t suddenly look like she was ripped out of a Grok Imagine demo. DLSS 5 won’t launch until the fall, will require powerful hardware to run, and is an optional feature. But it’s a technology pushed by one of the most valuable companies in the world, one that has the backing of major video game developers. And they all seem content to associate their games with a very particular aesthetic.
In a statement on Nvidia’s announcement blog, Bethesda boss Todd Howard said that “with DLSS 5, art style and detail shine through without being held back by the traditional limitations of real-time rendering,” while noting that the feature will be available in Star Field. Jun Takeuchi, executive producer of many of Capcom’s biggest blockbusters, including Requiemsaid that “DLSS 5 represents another important step in the progression of visual fidelity, helping players become even more immersed in the world of resident Evil.”
It’s a little strange to hear that some of the most influential names in gaming decided it was cool for Nvidia to replace their carefully designed characters with generic AI-powered versions. In a follow-up tweet, Bethesda noted that what we’re seeing is a “very early preview” and that “the studio’s art teams will further adjust the lighting and final effect to look like what we think works best for each game.” So perhaps the version of DLSS 5 available in the fall will be very different.
But what we are seeing now portends a gloomy future. AI has infiltrated almost every aspect of our lives, and one of the most frustrating ways has been at an aesthetic level. The AI-generated faces are an amalgamation of countless images, which are then used to spit out a sort of homogenized ideal. It’s usually easy to identify thanks to a handful of telltale signs: unusually smooth skin and even features, perpetually cheerful eyes, a smiling mouth with full lips, perfectly styled hair that looks synthetic, small noses, and HDR-style lighting that highlights every contour. On their own, these can be typical facial features, but when every AI face has all or most of them, we start heading into the uncanny valley.
That’s why so many people reacted strongly to the faces featured in Nvidia’s ad: They don’t just look bad, they look like everything else. This same aesthetic is prevalent everywhere from Instagram feeds to YouTube thumbnails, and it has gradually spread from social media to more traditional forms of entertainment and culture. I’ve yet to see a good AI-generated movie, and yet they keep coming, and you can identify them from a single screen. Nvidia’s new technology is the most visible example of this aesthetic infiltrating games.
There are a number of reasons why seeing AI mutilate an artist’s work is awkward for games in particular. The industry has been ravaged by layoffs and studio closures following very costly misplaced bets and a post-pandemic downturn, so the potential for replacing human labor with slop isn’t very promising. It’s also a medium in which a subset of the audience has very backward ideas about what a normal human woman looks like. It is therefore extremely problematic to make existing characters both more generic and more caricatured using an AI tool.
Grace’s face rendered via DLSS 5 is a first look at what things could look like if adoption becomes widespread. And if that happens, being a good friend might mean turning it off when you visit, just like smoothing out the moves.
