Artificial intelligence enhances blurry faces into 'super-resolution images'

Researchers have figured out a way to transform a few dozen pixels into a high resolution image of a face using artificial intelligence. A team from Duke University in the US created an algorithm capable of "imagining" realistic-looking faces from blurry, unrecognisable pictures of people, with eight-times more effectiveness than previous methods. "Never have super-resolution images been created at this resolution before with this much detail," said Duke computer scientist Cynthia Rudin, who led the research. The images generated by the AI do not resemble real people, instead they are faces that look plausibly real. It therefore cannot be used to identify people from low resolution images captured by security cameras.