AI makes blurry faces look 64 times sharper

Researchers at Duke University, North Carolina, have developed a new AI tool that can turn blurry, unrecognisable images of people's faces into eerily convincing computer-generated portraits, in finer detail than ever before. Previous methods have been capable of scaling images up to eight times their original resolution. But the Duke team's algorithm creates realistic-looking faces with up to 64 times the resolution – "imagining" missing features such as fine lines, eyelashes, and stubble – based on just a handful of pixels. "Never have super-resolution images been created at this resolution before with this much detail," said Duke computer scientist Cynthia Rudin, who led the team. The system cannot be used to identify people, the researchers say.