What is AI upscaling?

This handy development in TV picture processing is able to take content of a lower resolution than your TV's own panel and optimize it to look better, sharper, and more detailed. It may sound a lot like regular old upscaling, and you'd be right – the'AI' part just means the upscaling happens with a greater awareness of context. That's because Al upscaling involves creating new pixels of image information to add detail where there wasn't any before, filling in the gaps to recreate a higher-resolution image, all the while using machine learning to improve the result. Handle this badly and it can look like overcooked picture sharpening, a feature seen in the menus of most TVs, and which we usually advise turning all the way down. But top TV brands – as well as Nvidia, maker of PC graphics hardware – now have compelling 4K and 8K AI upscaling techniques that elevate'AI upscaling' beyond the meaningless marketing buzzword it might have been.