• kitnaht@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    haha, what a bunch of reactionaries. I love how they point to a completely unreadable blur on the original, and go “Seee?! You can’t read that in the upscaled version!!” – as if you could in the original.

    The upscales look great with the exception of some fine detail of the shadows on the back. Especially in cases where they don’t have the original content, I think it’s a perfectly fine way to go about things.

    When you’ve gotta zoom in 100x magnification just to find something to complain about, I’d say that’s pretty damn good. Though I do wonder if “progressive” upscaling would be able to retain more fine detail (upscale from 360p to 480p, from 480p to 720p, 720p to 1080p, in discreet steps) – or if it would just fuck the image up further.

    • paraphrand@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      The point is it’s fake 4k, and in a real remaster of the film stock, the example of the text would be more readable. I understand that the source material isn’t available for all of the films.

      I think it’s totally fair to either ask for AI upscaling to stop happening on purchasable media, or to ask for it to be clearly labeled as such.

      • kitnaht@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        I think it’s totally fair to either ask for AI upscaling to stop happening on purchasable media, or to ask for it to be clearly labeled as such.

        Why? People keep buying it. The method of upscaling doesn’t matter to most people - only enthusiasts. It’s allowing a lot more work to be revived from the dead with it as well - overall I think the benefits far outweigh the problems.

        • paraphrand@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          For those who care. Just like how audio formats are labeled, and multiple options are provided. Even though most people don’t care.

          Just label it “AI enhanced” or “AI upscaled to 4k”. It’s not too difficult, and it could be a tiny little box next to the other technical details people ignore.

          There would be far less of the “reactionary” reaction if people were not “discovering” the situation after release, and potentially after preordering.

          Edit: also, to be clear, I don’t think AI upscaling is bad in all cases. I watch Deep Space Nine AI upscaled. And that’s another example of source material not being available.

      • kitnaht@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        re·​ac·​tion·​ary rē-ˈak-shə-ˌner-ē

        : of, relating to, or favoring old-fashioned political or social ideas

        AI BAD is a reactionary take. It’s a conservative social idea.

          • kitnaht@lemmy.world
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            2 hours ago

            Criticism of AI taking jobs is a fair take. Even if AI only makes the workflow more efficient, that’s less people that need to be hired in the industry. It’s fair in realizing that AI is valuable, and is doing amazing things, while also criticizing the downsides of using it.

            AI is in its infancy. Different techniques are only going to make it better and better at what it does - it will end up taking jobs. But just broadly claiming it’s bad because you can’t read words that already weren’t readable in the source material is silly.

            The reactionary take is “AI is useless, nobody should be using it” or “They should label everything that uses AI so I can avoid it!”…those takes are completely reactionary. The takes complaining about the ‘quality’ of the AI upscale, even though it looks FANTASTIC are reactionary. An upscale wouldn’t be available at all if AI hadn’t been produced to do it. So it’s clearly worth using. It’s produced a result that I’m sure MANY are happy with. There’s only a small handful of extraordinarily LOUD individuals making a fuss over it.

            I think the biggest criticism of AI is the one that almost NOBODY actually ever complains about: Jobs. Wages are already lower than they have been in 20 years, and NOW it takes EVEN less people to do the same job? Wealth inequality is only going to be exacerbated by AI.

            Edit: Also wasn’t me who downvoted your question asking me to define reactionary – so I upvoted to try and counter it, it’s a fair question to ask I think.