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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.

Duke University researchers have developed a way to turn unrecognizable images into detailed computer-generated portraits... but there's something off about these lifelike portraits.

Duke University researchers have developed an AI tool that can turn blurry, unrecognizable pictures of people's faces into eerily convincing computer-generated portraits, in finer detail than ever before. Previous methods can scale an image of a face up to eight times its original resolution. But the Duke team has come up with a way to take a handful of pixels and create realistic-looking faces with up to 64 times the resolution, 'imagining' features such as fine lines, eyelashes and stubble that weren't there in the first place. "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: It won't turn an out-of-focus, unrecognizable photo from a security camera into a crystal clear image of a real person.