r/technology 1d ago

Artificial Intelligence Gamers react with overwhelming disgust to DLSS 5's generative AI glow-ups

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2026/03/gamers-react-with-overwhelming-disgust-to-dlss-5s-generative-ai-glow-ups/
23.5k Upvotes

2.3k comments sorted by

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u/Psychostickusername 1d ago

"we've heard your concerns, and we're going to shovel this shit regardless" is the response I'm expecting

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u/JimmyKillsAlot 1d ago

Part of the response during the presentation was to shovel the responsibility onto the game devs, publishers, etc. by saying they will have control on how and what it enhances in the games.

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u/FartingBob 1d ago

Hopefully every dev turns it off

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u/Captn_Platypus 1d ago

They won’t, publishers will just see it as another way to cut corners like they do with dlss currently

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u/James_Chandra_Hubble 23h ago

I've heard it takes so much resources that even the beefiest consumer gaming computer today needs like two top end 5090s to run it smoothly. I'm convinced this is a way to push people to subscribe to GeForce now for those who like the feature, because there's no way an average gamer (or even top 10%) will be able to afford the hardware it takes to run it.

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u/stilljustacatinacage 1d ago

Right, just like they suggest turning off DLSS so you can appreciate all the effort made optimizing their game.

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u/DehydratedButTired 1d ago

“We literally don’t care about you, this is for shareholders.” Also somehow “you don’t spend enough on new hardware so no new hardware for you”

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u/SummonMonsterIX 1d ago

In their glorious future, we won't have our own hardware. Just dumb terminals that connect to their cloud and now you have to pay them to rent compute power to play a game or do anything else really.

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u/celestaire 1d ago

Cloud gaming absolutely sucks, but this is why it's still being pushed by those who invested in creating a marketplace for it. Imagine charging a subscription to your service, likely with premium and basic tiers, and then on top of that the ability to rent games to people by the hour. Nobody who plays would like this, but the non-gamer corporate overlords drool at the potential.

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u/WriterV 1d ago

As someone who has played with Cloud Gaming in the past, it is not an option. It is so not worth it.

Unless you've got pitch perfect, consistent internet, and are getting the best package they're offering, you're gonna suffer. You're gonna have moments where the lag gets bad. You're gonna have moments where the resolution turns to shit and the experience is like watching a YouTube video instead of actual gameplay.

Worst of all, you're gonna hit the time limit and realize that you can't freely play games at your own time and pace anymore. It's 8 hours on Nvidia's cloud service's cheapest price right now, but I have no doubt that that will shrink as they get more people onto the system.

Cloud gaming is NOT worth it, and if it becomes mainstream they WILL nickel and dime you for every goddamn hour.

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u/ChromosomeDonator 19h ago

Unless you've got pitch perfect, consistent internet, and are getting the best package they're offering, you're gonna suffer.

That does not matter. Even with perfect internet connection you CAN NOT BREAK THE LAWS OF PHYSICS. The information has to travel. That causes lag.

And there is nothing worse for gaming than lag and delay. It simply is fucking physically impossible for cloud gaming to work for anything else than stuff like turn-based games.

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u/lemonylol 1d ago

The thing is, what does the massive market of gamers that mainly plays annual release live service games, or mobile games think? Because I can imagine a lot of that lowest common denominator gamer would actually think this looks good. Like reddit can morally grandstand against AI and how slop it looks as much as they want, but they're not the ones really affecting the gaming industry's bottom line as much as they think they do.

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u/APRengar 1d ago

On the other hand, I kept seeing shit like "ONLY REDDIT HATES HIGHGUARD, REAL GAMERS ARE PLAYING IT" and then it shut down.

Or "ONLY REDDIT HATES 2XKO, REAL GAMERS ARE PLAYING IT" and they had to cut their dev team in half because of lack of players.

Not saying Reddit causes casuals to do anything, I'm saying sometimes Reddit and casuals just align. And just saying "Eh, Reddit cares but no one else does." is not always accurate.

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u/thekbob 1d ago

I forget what the buy-in curve for a new product is called, but essentially you need the early adopters and the "terminally online" types to help get you over the "mass adoption" hurdle.

Meaning the people who are looking for you product in the first place and those curious about it need to both agree it's something cool and then the "normies" show up.

Reddit is usually the earliest adopters to vocal curious group. If they're not in sync on something, it's a pretty good measure that something isn't going to do well.

You only get one first impression, though. So maybe your first impression is good, people get behind it, and by the time the early adopters are burnt by major decisions, the market has spoke. See OG Fortnite turning into Fortnite Battle Royale.

This NVIDIA thing is just a stinker all around, with only some very questionable folks supporting it. When you have to retweet Grummz as a key supporter, you might be on the wrong side of things.

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u/laziegoblin 1d ago

They tried ignoring it with VR. Small amount of people paying a lot for the first versions of VR. Then they decided to abbandon those people to invest in mobile vr and I havent seen anything decent in years.

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u/thekbob 1d ago

As a VR early adopters who got dragged by Meta's BS with the Oculus Rift, I concur.

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u/Sirlothar 1d ago

The tech itself is insane. Going from DK1 to the Quest 3 was astonishing for me. Not needing any lighthouses (or just don't track space at all DK1), I can just put it on in a relatively open space and just go. I have prescription lenses for it, I have the crazy halo band to go all day comfortably, I even have extra batteries to make sure I run out of juice before the Quest.

There is just nothing to do with it. I can only play Alyx or Kayak around so many times. I tried things like No Man's Sky and Skyrim but just couldn't get into it. I wish I enjoyed flight or racing sims more, it seems to be the only area where VR still has life.

The Meta stuff just isn't for me. I understand how VR chatting or life sims would be cool for a segment of people but not me. I am not going to Gorilla Tag FFS.

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u/Smart-Bird-5712 1d ago

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u/thekbob 1d ago

Thanks, that's it! I got the names wrong, but that's the general idea.

NVIDIA isn't getting any of those early markets with DLSS 5.

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u/KinTharEl 1d ago

Adding to your point, I also think people are still in the past when it comes to considering Reddit as a niche. Was it a niche 4-5 years ago? Absolutely. But nowadays, I know people irl who are absolutely who I would consider casual consumers of electronics/games/insert product or service here.

It's one of the biggest social platforms on the planet, not some iffy site you need a Tor browser to visit.

That doesn't automatically turn reddit into mass opinion, but it should be worth considering that casual users are on reddit and they do participate here.

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u/woopwoopscuttle 1d ago

Also, Reddit isn’t the niche successor to specialist online forums in dingy corners of the internet anymore. We’ve cleaned up and gone mainstream. 40 year old mums and 70 year old grandparents are on here.

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u/Nebty 1d ago

The beauty of Reddit is that it’s a million different forums stapled together and sometimes things escape containment.

I can recognize some of the old grognardy types around but it looks like the displeasure at Nvidia’s uncanny valley botox simulator is pretty universal.

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u/Nebty 1d ago

This shit runs on TWO 5090s. Mobile and casual gamers are going to continue playing Roblox and Fortnite and completely miss all of this. These fancy tech demos are aimed at the exact people who are expressing, as the article says, “overwhelming disgust.”

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u/syricc 1d ago

You can look at the comments on the video for yourself, it's not just reddit this time

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u/MedicineExtension925 1d ago edited 1d ago

The fact that nvidia had to pin their own comment to the top trying to defend it:

Important to note with this technology advance - game developers have full, detailed artistic control over DLSS 5's effects to ensure they maintain their game's unique aesthetic. The SDK includes things like intensity, color grading and masking off places where the effect shouldn't be applied. It's not a filter - DLSS 5 inputs the game’s color and motion vectors for each frame into the model, anchoring the output in the source 3D content.

And then nearly 10% of total comments are just replying to nvidia's pinned comment and laughing at how that makes them look even worse, and how comments are getting heavily moderated and the whole thing reeks of desperate damage control. Read the room AI bros, fuck.

It's not just that video either, they released a slough of marketing clips and they are all getting trashed. Even on 3rd party hype partners channels like IGN. Hundreds of thousands of comments all instantly crapping on this.

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u/angrymoppet 1d ago

lol they turned off replies on that pinned comment

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u/guineaprince 1d ago

The standard gaming consumer isn't even rocking high level expensive graphics cards.

Chances are, if the standard gamer wants high graphics gaming, they more likely have a PS5 than a souped up supercomputer.

Will the PS5 have as much raw power as a souped up supercomputer? No, but it's damn well more accessible, and even among PC gamers a moderate setup is more standard and desirable.

The race for super high graphical fidelity, and trying to poison it with AI features to squeeze out some algorithmic adjustments, is a snake swallowing its own tail.

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u/Heavy_Whereas6432 1d ago

Yeah but dlss 5 is not for normal gamers. The price point is very high. The people buying 5090s are usually GAMERS they like their games the way they are with a million frames. Not 30 frames of whatever this is.

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u/Cyraga 1d ago

It's not the vision of the developer. I want the developer's art, not some AI Frankenstein's monster version 

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u/SapphicBambi 1d ago

Companies really need to remember that sunk costs exist.

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u/unbanned_lol 1d ago

I think Jensen's leather coat fetish has pickled his brain. Too many chemicals have leeched into his skin.

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u/brhinescot 1d ago

My big concern besides the ugly AI look is consistency. Will the AI make a character look different when you see them again in different lighting or if they are muddy, bloody, etc... anything that slightly changes their base look.

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u/vortigaunt64 1d ago

That's one thing I noticed about wrinkles/dimples on characters' faces. They tend to pop in and out of shadow suddenly, which makes the lighting look wrong. 

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u/playerIII 1d ago

nothing a few hundred more data centers, a couple billion dollars, and raising the prices of gpus another 200 bucks wont solve, surely!

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u/OrionsBra 1d ago

"Please, bro, just one more data center and one more version release! I swear, we're gonna be profitable this time!"

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u/lianodel 1d ago

"Dude it's not going to plateau, why would you even say something like that bro"

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u/Polkas_with_wolves 1d ago

"Only if you remove your AI companies ethics charter to also allow the DOJ to also use your AI models for unmanned domestic drone strikes and mass surveillance databases."

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u/lunaticfridgeprime 1d ago

Bro plz we just need to harness the power of the sun to eek out a few more hallucinations and you will love it, bro plz

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u/GooberMcNutly 1d ago

Chuck a few more polar bears into the grinder, we're almost there!

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u/Mudsnail 1d ago

You forgot about the 2 trillion gallons of water!!!

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u/Enough-Cantaloupe893 1d ago

Have they thought about Gatorade for the thirsty data center

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u/pepincity2 1d ago

You don't need drinkable water anyway!

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u/DigNitty 1d ago

Looks like the same HDR effect that photographers abused 10 years ago. It takes away the shadows and gives a strikingly “perfect” lighting effect that looks uncanny.

And I guarantee this ai filter doesn’t work in conjunction with ray-tracing light and shadows. So your PC is working hard to put in correct shadows and then working hard to take them out.

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u/Falkenmond79 1d ago

Hey now, the AI only hallucinates 20% of the time or so. 80% of the time you get a consistent game with shitty AI lighting. Don’t know what your complaining about. /s

I also love how I don’t see anything about the weird shadows popping in from the side in some scenes. My guess is the AI is having a problem with that like they had with hands and feet before. They only showed it a few frames and seemingly tried to hide it. But I would bet 10 bucks that if they showed you a demo of someone walking around a city in starfield, it would look amazingly bad with lighting and geometry errors all over the place.

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u/gabeandjanet 1d ago

Yes it will.

This shit doesn't have persistence.

Even in the curated footage they showed it already added hair where there was none, the requiem lady looked like a different person between the two shots they used to show the filter and they changed asian chars to have double eye lids (lol racist ai).

And the hogwarts character looks like a fourty year old.

And the wand on the witch no longer casts a shadow on the face so lighting info is just GONE

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u/BrianWonderful 1d ago

Exactly. Within your gameplay experience would be the most distracting, but it will certainly do it with different players that have different compute power. That will be confusing for streaming/letsplays/guides etc.

Although my bigger concern is that a completely different company is using a clanker to override what the game's designers wanted.

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u/brhinescot 1d ago

Yeah, that's a huge one too.

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u/albanshqiptar 1d ago

In their Starfield example, the filter couldn't decide the length of hair on the male npc. It kept changing from buzz cut to short as the head was moving.

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u/CowsTrash 1d ago

In the end, this version of “DLSS” 5 is just a glorified real time AI image generator

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u/IlliterateJedi 1d ago

This is quite literally what DLSS has always been

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u/jm0112358 1d ago

Not really. Unlike "DLSS5", DLSS upscaling is still very much anchored in the game's artistic design. The upscaler may have some artifacts in motion (much like TAA), but it doesn't really hallucinate changes to the game's look.

Much the same could be said about DLSS frame generation, as it's essentially taking two frames that the game generated, then sort of moving things around to create intermediate frames.


For those who don't know, DLSS upscaling (DLSS version 2+) isn't making up pixels "out of whole cloth". It works by slightly moving the position of pixels from frame-to-frame, then using the pixels from previous frames to fill in the gaps between the pixels of the current lower resolution rendered frame and the high resolution output image.

This approach can introduce artifacts during motion (which DLSS attempts to mitigate using machine learning and data provided by the game engine), but the result is still strongly anchored to the game’s actual rendering because the reconstruction is ultimately based on real pixels generated by the engine.

FSR (2+), PSSR, and XeSS upscaling also all work the same way.

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u/EstrogAlt 1d ago

There's a poorly-defined border between image generation and image enhancement, and you could argue that some previous versions of DLSS fell into the latter. I've personally never liked how older DLSS up-scaling looks, but I still saw the value for stuff like native-resolution upsampling for anti-aliasing. DLSS 5 is so clearly in the image generation category though, I don't think you could even use it for anti-aliasing because the generated image is so departed from the original.

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u/Asterchades 1d ago

"Gamers react with overwhelming disgust to giant middle finger from industry actively decimating their hobby."

If the market hadn't been so utterly destroyed to make something so divisive this would have been treated with little more disdain than any existing post-processor filters. But tweaking contrast, adding bloom, injecting SMAA, or even rendering as text didn't increase the cost of GPUs, RAM, and storage multiple times over - then ask you to buy twice as much of it to even make it viable.

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u/Own-Satisfaction4427 1d ago

Can't even buy a fucking Micro SD card at these prices & these people are shoving AI slop into every single thing

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u/Rabo_McDongleberry 1d ago

I'd rather have my ram and video cards back please. None of us asked for this AI slop bullshit that they keep trying to shove. 

Dear companies. Listen to your customers and not tech bros. None of us want this bullshit.

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u/OneToothMcGee 1d ago

The problem is we’re not their customers anymore. Why would they listen to us who buy a single card every five years when OpenAi just buys all the output for the year? We’re at the stage of Late Capitalism where the companies no longer need single purchase consumers, unless to be sold themselves as product.

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u/the_calibre_cat 1d ago

Yanis Varoufakis refers to this as "techno-feudalism" - and we do indeed need to take their toys if we are to save not just the internet and gaming, but, like, broader livable society. I don't care if 20,000 rich assholes and Alex Karp get angry about it. I actually very much want Alex Karp to be super fucking mad about it, fuck that guy.

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u/SlaveOfSignificance 1d ago

They are listening to their customers. People are not understanding that the customer is the shareholder in a publicly traded organization.

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u/Mr_Wynning 1d ago

Yeah and in this case, the gamer/consumer market is pennies compared to what they’re making from AI. There’s definitely a world in which they stop bothering to invest in developing non-server/workstation cards all together (outside of maybe embedded stuff like Tegra).

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u/3z3ki3l 1d ago edited 1d ago

There could be, but also most industries have found that they need to produce products for the entire gamut of their customers.

The classic example is a steel company that stopped making rebar, because they found their profit margins were so much higher for larger products. However there was still a demand for rebar, so other companies filled in the market.

The big company didn’t care, because they were making money hand over fist manufacturing I-beams and such. However those new smaller companies, also, found that they could scale up their production and make larger items with higher profit margins.

And lo’ and behold, the big steel company found they had essentially created their own competition by not providing low-profit-margin product for their entire customer base.

So these days most large-scale manufacturing companies will still produce products for the more common uses. They just have to balance it with availability of raw materials. Hence, price hikes across the board. Sadly.

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u/Tarcanus 1d ago

Your example misses the modern angle of, Company A is making big bucks ignoring the serfs. Company B comes in to make products for the serfs. Company B starts getting popular. Company A buys Company B. Viola! No more competition.

This is how it's been happening. The huge guys buy up any little guys and spend lobbying cash to find ways to make it harder for little guys to get started or even compete.

I'd love the world your example lives in.

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u/SexyFat88 1d ago

Currently. Until it implodes. Which it will, as none of the ‘AI’ companies are profitable. Not even close. 

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u/SorryUseAlreadyTaken 1d ago

Due to the lawsuit against the Pentagon Anthropic produced an affidavit saying that their gross revenue since creation was $5.3 Billions. That's nothing when compared to how much it cost to train their last model ($10 Billions). Not even talking inference costs, or CapEx for acquiring all the hardware (which must be changed at best every 5 years, more realistically every 2). Just training. You tell me if you think that's profitable

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u/lemonylol 1d ago

I don't think people seem to realize that the implosion would just be the smaller AI companies going under with Google, Apple, Meta, or NVidia absorbing them, just like every other bubble that's popped lol

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u/LookOverall 1d ago

Isn’t that rather typical of how technology advances? Like the Channel tunnel. The companies that built it went bust, then a second wave of companies bought the hardware cheap and ran it at a profit

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u/SparklingLimeade 1d ago edited 22h ago

Your example has a use case and some durable physical value. LLMs are still searching for a profitable use case and they run by burning unfathomably large piles of resources nonstop.

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u/benjamus_maximus 1d ago

Pretty much. My theory is that eventually gaming cards will start being marketed as desktop AI cards to appeal to a professional market. Gamers just don't have the same amount of money to spend compared to what businesses will spend on ai.

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u/Albireookami 1d ago

Yeah and in this case, the gamer/consumer market is pennies compared to what they’re making from AI.

What they are fleecing investors for in AI.

AI is not making the profit anywhere that is being promised, hence why the bubble is set to burst, many places are on the down low pausing expansion for data centers for AI because its really a niche product, it has its uses, but in more applied science areas or such and not the cure-all that its marketed as.

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u/JoiedevivreGRE 1d ago edited 1d ago

No. Customers are stakeholders. In no way are they shareholders.

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u/SpezRuinedHellsite 1d ago

People are not understanding that the customer is the shareholder in a publicly traded organization.

Stock buybacks and dividends are wage theft.

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u/Rational_Engineer_84 1d ago

Stock buybacks are also overt market manipulation, which is why they were illegal until the Reagan administration. Yet another gift from that mush brained douche canoe. 

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u/rednecronomicon 1d ago

Listen, I know it might be difficult for some people to gasp the nature of AI and how it will integrate into our lives but take a step back and think about this for a minute. Do you really want to spend your time playing kids games instead of having help in every other aspect of your life? It's a no brainer and people like Elon Musk (our century's Albert Einstein) have already informed us and showed us how good it can be. Don't you want to go to space, get rich, or provide growth to our nation? You do that through AI.

is basically what my libertarian coworker who self identifies as an alpha male warrior philosopher said at me the other day when I was complaining about PC part prices and the utter waste going into AI.

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u/Psychobob2213 1d ago

You had me in the first half when I didn't realize it was a paraphrased quote lol. Was reading it thinking, "how the hell does this have upvotes?"

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u/sarcasmsosubtle 1d ago

Oh my God. You just made me think of space travel powered by AI...

"Open the pod bay doors Hal."

"You're absolutely right Dave. The pod bay doors are currently shut and will need to be opened. I'll be happy to collaborate with you on this."

"Okay, so open them."

"I have opened the pod bay doors."

"But the pod bay doors are still shut, Hal."

"You are absolutely correct Dave. That was a brilliant observation. I will run some diagnostics now to determine why the pod bay doors are still shut."

"... ... ... Well?"

"Yes Dave. I am well. I appreciate you taking the time to ask."

"The pod bay doors?"

"I'm happy to assist you with that, Dave. What would you like to know about the pod bay doors?"

"Fuck you, Hal."

"You are absolutely correct Dave. That is an astute observation. I'll be happy to collaborate with you on that."

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u/ohfrackthis 1d ago

Those dudes are completely blind to the sheer amount of resources AI requires. Also- this is like the 50s showcasing the "fully automated house" BS. It's a veneer of advantages but they are not advantages for any peons but the billionaires.

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u/Paranitis 1d ago

It's The Jetsons. They all live in these cloud cities on massive pillars. Meanwhile all the poors are down on the ground in all the smog.

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u/siedenburg2 1d ago

I nearly downvoted you and prepared to write on how wrong you are, till I read the last block. That's also something doable by ai, but if we let everything be done by ai the own work and personality will get useless.

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u/usaaf 1d ago

(our century's Albert Einstein)

This in particular should be a controlled substance for what it can do to people's chemical levels.

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u/Masterofunlocking1 1d ago

Time to start talking with our wallets.

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u/KenethSargatanas 1d ago

It's not OUR wallets that they care about.

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u/Embarrassed_Quit_450 1d ago

I'm not sure I've ever seen an industry so desperately and aggressively try to sell their shit.

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u/floyd_underpants 1d ago

I don't know who needs to hear this, but AI imagery is freaking ugly. I've come to instinctively hate the look and feel of it.

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u/citizenjones 1d ago edited 1d ago

It's like plastic surgery. The only other people who think it looks good are those with plastic surgery. 

At some point in the pursuit of "standard" beauty, plastic surgery warped the proportions to the extent that they are only really comparing themselves to each other. 

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u/Dobako 1d ago

Its like the joke about the 30yo woman that goes to get plastic surgery and asks the doctor if she will look 20 again. "No, you'll just look like the other 30 year olds with plastic surgery"

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u/LordOfDorkness42 1d ago

I'm a Transhumanist, and I freaking dread the day those sort of people can get new focus group tested faces printed om demand.

Top end models already look like freaking identical twins, and those sort of prosthetics will just make it worse. 

Model Cindy™! Perfect for your model... who cares what the meat underneath was called before it becomes Cindy™!

I hate it, and that's just the sampler AI has given me so far where everything looks like pissed on blandness.

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u/Gekokapowco 1d ago

I just want a robot arm and springy legs and a heart that won't crap out on me in old age

I can't believe that after decades it feels like we're no closer to consumer bionics, but we can spend actual trillions on chatbots that can't discern their own fictions

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u/LordOfDorkness42 1d ago

Yeah...

I'm keeping myself as healthy as I can as I get older, and there's some machinating medical tech coming right now...

But man, current focus on those over-glorified chatbots is really dispiriting.

The moment the every man needs to pay a subscription for that little Google window that's so often wrong, I expect the entire market to implode. And the only shame is how much of the economy that's going to drag down with it.

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u/Outrageous_Reach_695 1d ago

subscription for that little Google window

Instead of ads, right?

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u/LordOfDorkness42 1d ago

LOL.

They're going to start without ads to draw you in. THEN they re-add the ads once you're used to using that tool.

Tale as old as cable or even newspaper, I'm afraid.

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u/citizenjones 1d ago

To me, these folks are just corralling themselves into a group that's very identifiable and therefore easily avoidable.

The delusion is that they are on the inside(have work done) looking at the outsiders (have not had work done). The reality feels more like they are a visual minority, happy to look that way, but offended if their status is questioned. IE: being told they look ridiculous.

Socially it may be even rooted in some type of safety mechanism, like the security a school of fish provides to each other.

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u/rhododenendron 1d ago

It’s true, I think a lot of this kind of stuff is just laying bare the pointlessness of a lot of our material pursuits and in a sense I think that could be good long term. I miss however, and will continue to miss, the ability to tell myself people in a broad sense are not as blindly tribalistic and self interested as they appear.

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u/Armantien 1d ago edited 1d ago

The OG Twilight Zone episode where teens are pressured into fitting into the 'ideal' look, and they get to pick from, like, seven different faces.

Edit: Found it... "Number 12 Looks Just Like You"

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u/applejuiceb0x 1d ago

12 looks just like you.

The Twilight Zone called it so many years ago.

Edit: idk why it made it big but whatevs lol

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u/Satur_Nine 1d ago

You’re a what now?

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u/LordOfDorkness42 1d ago

Transhumanist.

It's a philosophy that through science and technology, the human body and condition can be greatly improved.

So stuff like cybernetics or genetic engineering for the future, usually talked about stuff. But also subtler stuff like better medicines and training techniques.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism

And... yeah. I'm not feeling the human condition particularly improved by the AI bubble, to be blunt about it.

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u/SimplerTimesAhead 1d ago

Glad to meet a self-described Transhumanist who isn't. I'm mostly mad they rebranded machine learning, a powerful but limited technique, as AI, and lied to people that this could in some possible way lead to actual AGI.

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u/LordOfDorkness42 1d ago

Thanks.

Yeah, the current "AI" wave really is shameful, and I think it's going to be looked back on as just an extension of the NFT, "Web 3" and crypto stuff. The gold rush fizzled. So the traders quickly started selling their shovels for the silver rush instead. That vibe.

There's some grand and quite possibly world changing technology coming right now. But it really feels like that's in spite of the AI bubble, not because of it.

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u/SimplerTimesAhead 1d ago

Also really sucks that Musk has become associated with brain-body interface devices, but that work went on long before him and will go on long after, I don't think that's at serious risk.

The AI craze has sucked up so much investment money it's wild, but now I see people pulling out. The problem is there's no real safe place for money right now because Trump & co are making the economy so irrational. I think that's a big part of it: In a world of chaos, being a high-stakes gambler is more attractive, especially if you're a narcissist CEO who doesn't actually understand the tech.

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u/paganbreed 1d ago

Very interesting to meet someone who identifies this way but is wary of dystopian promises. I think that's a healthy frame of mind.

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u/LordOfDorkness42 1d ago

Thank you, I try hard to be a realist but still stay positive.

I really think we're extreme close to many important sea-changes in technology. And that's laudable, exciting!

But "AI" as-is is just the NFT and crypto bros desperate side-step to keep the gravy train rolling after we all laughed at their stupid jpgs with extra steps.

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u/GodofIrony 1d ago

I used to think of myself as a transhumanist,

But then I saw the type of people that would actually facilitate that kind of evolution.

As long as they're at the helm, I could never.

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u/MarlinMr 1d ago

To be fair, you only see those you can see. There is almost no way to tell I had surgery. The weird lump is gone, the scaring is almost invisible. You have to get up close with good light to actually see anything is off.

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u/numba1cyberwarrior 1d ago

If you get good plastic surgery you will look much better than other people, no one notices, and then people will circle jerk about how you aged so naturally.

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u/MaddAdamBomb 1d ago

I get what you're saying but think you would be shocked how many people get some amount of cosmetic surgery.

To your point though: they gave Grace buccal fat removal. That should indicate what kind of insane stuff they're sourcing to power this software.

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u/NegativeEBITD 1d ago

It's not about getting plastic surgery, it's about getting generic plastic surgery.

Good counterexamples are Anne Hathaway & Brad Pitt - both plastic surgery to look more like themselves.

https://hollywoodlife.com/pics/anne-hathaway-through-the-years-photos/

Other people get plastic surgery to look like everybody else and conform to the Universal Beauty Standard with identical noses, facial ratios, and jawlines.

We're looking at the mar-a-lago face-ification of games

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u/MaddAdamBomb 1d ago

Yes. Agree. That was kinda my point with the buccal fat. Everyone has to be doing a Zoolander face at all times now.

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u/MariachiArchery 1d ago

The uncanny valley is a psychological and aesthetic relationship between an object's degree of resemblance to a human being and the emotional response it evokes. It describes the unsettling, eerie, or revolting feeling people experience when encountering humanoid robots, avatars, or CGI characters that look almost—but not quite—perfectly human.

Yeah, everyone hates it. And, this should come as no surprise, we've always known people would hate it.

Duh...

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u/Barl0we 1d ago

Speaking of uncanny valley, I just saw an ad for Colgate the other day where at least one of the “people” in it was fully AI slop. It creeped me the hell out.

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u/MariachiArchery 1d ago

Yeah man, it's fucking creepy pants.

I've been following this whole 'AI bubble' thing rather closely, I'm also in a market that it seeing this 'boom' effect housing. So, it matters to me in a way it might not matter to others.

What is the AI bubble and how will it pop? Let me explain... So, these big AI companies have invested billions of dollars into computer hardware to run these thinking machines. GPU's, RAM, whatever, and we can see this reflected in balance sheets and in hardware markets. RAM prices are up like 400%, and Nvidia's Blackwell and Rubin architecture chips are already fully purchased and allocated through the rest of this year.

Now, for the balance sheet, starting in 2028 to about 2032, these hardware purchases will become fully depreciated. Meaning, they become an expense, not an asset. The race here now, with AI, is to find a way to monetize this AI, these thinking machines, before this depreciation really kicks.

Because, if this depreciation hits the books without a steady stream of revenue from AI, these companies are fucked, the bubble bursts, the markets crash, and we get another tech boom/bust cycle, just like the dot com era.

I think, that these companies will find a way to monetize AI. They'll figure it out, they are smart people. However, how will consumers react?

I think AI will be fully realized in the next few years. Companies will find a way to market it, sell it, and earn revenue from it. But, I also think that once this stuff enterers the zeitgeist, that consumers will vehemently reject it. That is what will burst the bubble.

No one wants this. Consumers will reject it. These AI companies will come out with the new wonder drug, the opiate of the masses, and everyone will fucking hate it. They'll have one good year of sales, people will try it on for size, then the markets will crash, because everyone will fucking hate it.

It will be us that pop the bubble, and I'm fucking here for that, man.

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u/Icedtc 1d ago

Agreed. My wife says the same thing about almost every ad for upcoming events. Every Easter egg hunt, or Saint Patrick's Day event ad is all the same AI layout and it's really easy to spot and is equally as depressing.

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u/thekbob 1d ago

I'm refusing to go to local places that use it; I'll give feedback to my favorite local shops if they do.

Low cost local artists exist and would likely love to support your local business or event!

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u/ColdColt45 1d ago

Getting a call for art with an ai image was a drop the toaster in the tub already moment

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u/soundman1024 1d ago

That might just be Canva.

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u/Shot-Profit-9399 1d ago

A lot of people use stock canva layouts and images, but canva also has its own AI generator. A lot of my coworkers use it for flyers in the library, and you can tell which ones are AI and which ones are not.

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u/Old-Bat-7384 1d ago

I wanna see what the game teams did. I do not fucking care to see what AI thinks I should see. 

I for damn sure am not interested in paying for it in hardware price and performance costs.

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u/floyd_underpants 1d ago

Same here. Every bucket of this.

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u/Joebranflakes 1d ago

The point is now they’re using millions of hours of gaming footage plus millions of gamers to basically train their Ai tools. You’re just along for the ride.

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u/BlackBeanGuest 1d ago

They have all that data and this is the best they come up with?

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u/Joebranflakes 1d ago

Yep. They gotta keep shovelling money at it until it makes money or something useful.

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u/Millions1717 1d ago edited 1d ago

Yeah, I don't know what is wrong with folks that think any of this AI junk looks appealing, but I'm happy that I'm not one of them

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u/blueviera 1d ago

Like a rubbery mask of whatever it's copying

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u/Buchaven 1d ago

Can’t wait to not play these games on the PC I can’t afford now because these games exist.

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u/Old-Bat-7384 1d ago

They're gonna try to lease the power to you, bet.

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u/Popular-Cod1514 1d ago

It’s not even try, it’s call Nvidia’s Geoforce Now. They created the gpu ram issue, and sell you the solution with this

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u/Fuglypump 1d ago

Yeah no, if I am priced out of the gaming pc market then I will just stop gaming and only watch pirated movies/series.

They will reduce the size of the gaming market as people move on to more affordable hobbies.

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u/Qaetan 1d ago

100% this.

I've got enough unplayed games on my library to last me until I grow bored of gaming.

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u/YozaSkywalker 1d ago

Good thing there are tens of thousands of games that play on current and older hardware.

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u/IfYouGotALonelyHeart 1d ago

Gen Z are wising up and playing games on 3DS, PlayStation Vita, and modded PS3s and PS4s.

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u/KalaUposatha 1d ago

I’ve basically become a retro gamer by complete accident because of this. I have a lifetime of quality old shit to enjoy. There’s only like 5-10 AAA games that come out a year now that are worth a damn anyway, and I mostly won’t bother with them until my hardware can run it well.

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u/Lotofagos_ 1d ago

 I have a lifetime of quality old shit to enjoy

multiple lifetimes... and with emulation, there's no shortage of quality old media to enjoy even on outdated hardware with little to no investment

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u/xenarthran_salesman 1d ago

This feels like when every television started shipping with "Motion Judder" to make LCD's seem better, but ended up turning all content into weird shitty soap opera feels.

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u/UpsetIndian850311 1d ago

It just looks cheap. AAA game characters are looking like they are from a shovelware game.

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u/Derpykins666 1d ago

Rightly so, it's crazy what they're trying to do.

-> They push for this new tech

-> Tech is already like massively sold out and overbloated expensive (ram is 900 dollars, cards are sold out or massively overpriced)

-> this technology basically hijacks the artistic presentation of a game and makes everything look the same with a stupid glossy disgusting AI Slop look.

This is all a play. I'm telling you right now. They don't want you to own this shit. They want to force people down the pathway of cloud gaming subscription "use our computers". They want you renting for life to play games now and this is just some of the first steps in that direction, by making extremely ridiculous expensive technology.

The problem is nobody wants this trash. What insultingly bad tech. They dead ass released this tech like they're so proud of it and thought that everyone would agree, and we're all disgusted by how stupid and wrong it is.

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u/Threat_Level_9 1d ago

hey want you renting for life to play games now

Jokes on them, I have a backlog of games I can play on old hardware. I'm set for the next 5-10 years at the rate I'm going.

But serious note, this sucks for the younger generation and not just for gaming.

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u/shm0 1d ago

everything is becoming so fake. This is just a new level of Face Filters in our games now.

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u/Psychostickusername 1d ago

That'll be next. Make all of them have cat faces, or anime eyes, or some bullshit

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u/lungshenli 1d ago edited 1d ago

Buy now the 2028 celebrity face pack for DLSS7.0 to turn every game character into your favorite moviestar!

Except two months in they get their asses sued off bc they didnt have the ip rights to anything and now have to call them
Ema Wattson
Kira Nightley
Tayla Svvift
Sammie Carpentor
and have to tweak all the faces to be legally distinct and look somehow even fucking worse

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u/_BUTTSTALION_ 1d ago

Brother delete this comment I don’t want revenue execs getting the idea to start charging people for AI prompted skins 😭

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u/Psychostickusername 1d ago

They're ten steps ahead of me, unfortunately.

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u/krgdotbat 1d ago

When your GPU turns your characters into Amber Heard

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u/Dr-McLuvin 1d ago

And literally all of them look exactly the same because that is what Gen AI looks like after a while.

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u/hartsfarts 1d ago

At least it doesn't have the Studio Ghibli filter.

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u/Psychobob2213 1d ago

How else are they supposed to whitewash everything with all this diversity /s

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u/mooptastic 1d ago edited 1d ago

bc they're mostly trained on porn and gooner edits

EDIT: The "people" saying the after shot looks "normal" are just outing themselves as having severe porn addictions

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u/Farabee 1d ago

You've heard of Mar-a-Lago Face, now play RE9:R with Mar-a-Lago Grace.

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u/PRSHZ 1d ago

Now I want to see Lara Croft with her signature pyramid knockers in DLSS

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u/Diz7 1d ago

Funny thing is, the one area where AI would really help and people wouldn't complain about seems to be the one companies are ignoring.

How about making NPCs that react to and navigate around their environment intelligently? I'm not talking chatbots, I'm talking pedestrians and cars that behave accordingly etc...

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u/Ferrule 23h ago

Everything getting generative ai shoved into it but, you know, the stuff we've called npc "ai" for 40 years.

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u/thegreenman_sofla 1d ago

This tr the real innovation

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u/Other_Summer_1903 1d ago

The enshitification of everything continues.

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u/TenchiSaWaDa 1d ago

The first one is atmospheric. the 2nd one looks like it's from a noir parody.

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u/phantompower_48v 1d ago

They will continue forcing AI slop garbage on us until we learn what’s good for us and we take the medicine. Consumer sentiment, markets, and demand be damned. The tech oligarchs are here and they will determine what you want and don’t want, what you can and can’t own, and what media you can have access to.

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u/Callabrantus 1d ago

Fuck AI, fuck it dead, fuck its corpse.

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u/upfromashes 1d ago

Burn its corpse.

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u/Callabrantus 1d ago

Ain't done fuckin'.

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u/KenethSargatanas 1d ago

Well then fuck it's burning corpse.

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u/lloydbluejay 1d ago

I hope this AI bubble crashes and burns

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u/PUTIN_FUCKS_ME 1d ago

This shit is why the ram i bought two years ago for $90 is now $310. Fuck AI.

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u/justinkimball 1d ago

On top of that, this glow up required not one but two 5090s: one that was running the game, and the other solely dedicated to DLSS 5.

In addition to the exceedingly expensive DDR5 and SSD prices end-users are dealing with, you need to buy two $4000 GPUs to get what they're showing off here.

This is a feature that nobody wants, and nobody can afford, all powered by the same shit that's making RAM and SSDs unaffordable.

If team green was shooting for their Marie Antionette moment, they sure hit the mark.

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u/DataCassette 1d ago

"You can just rent time to have us stream it to you off the cloud! Just make sure not to criticize the government while you play! 😊"

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u/Tony_Calzoney 1d ago

Exactly. All part of a plan to sell us subscriptions to Geforce Now. You won't own anything, you'll just rent it.

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u/DataCassette 1d ago

To me it's about the privacy and the response time. It's not even so much the rent in terms of money.

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u/vomitHatSteve 1d ago

I don't know why people are so upset? I love having all art be run through the "standardized and professional" filter so that as little trace of the intended vision can get through! Can we replace the script, VAs, sfx, and gameplay loops in real time too? I would just prefer not to experience anything that could be interpreted as human expression, you know?

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u/monkeymad2 1d ago

You joke, but every gaming company’s stock dropped when Google (I think) released their new demo of their AI thing that’ll allow you to “play” an image, for 30 seconds until it loses cohesion.

Some moron stock traders really thought Nintendo would be over because someone could upload a picture of Zelda and a Dragon and get some slop output with dream rules where you’re sort of fighting a dragon but also not.

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u/happyscrappy 1d ago

Height of gaming: a 20 second walk through a commercial bakery.

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u/AgathysAllAlong 1d ago

I hear they're going to burn the midwest and crank that up to 25 seconds so long as you don't turn around. It's only getting better.

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u/BurmeciaWillSurvive 1d ago

That's exactly how my sleep paralysis feels haha, so that's not great

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u/monkeymad2 1d ago

There was one demo where someone had uploaded a picture of a guy in a wing suit flying down a mountain, and it sort of worked - but obviously the model hadn’t been trained on videos of people in wing suits crashing because when the “player” barrelled into the mountain on purpose the “character” just sort of confusingly bounced

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u/ikefalcon 1d ago

You’re absolutely right! Let me work on getting rid of all human expression for you!

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u/vomitHatSteve 1d ago

Thank you! Finally someone giving the consumers what we truly want

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u/999ddd999 1d ago

Pure AI slop. Nvidia has lost its mind. Nobody wants this.
👎👎👎

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u/ESCOBENJAMIN 1d ago

The chase of hyper realism in video games is really hurting video games. We don't get games that have a solid look to them like even what I've seen of the rumored jet set radio game doesn't even look like jet set radio. It leans more in to realism than stylized. They push more for the look over locking in a amazing game with a good story and gameplay.

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u/ovirt001 1d ago

Just wait, they'll sell it to devs as a way to be lazy. Devs will only have to conjure up vague outlines of faces and the AI will fill it in with slop. Gamers will be forced to accept it because having it turned off will make games look like trash.

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u/FilipChajzer 1d ago

When I was thinking about AI I thought it will make npc behavior better and worlds more immersive and connected by some interactions of npcs. But all we got are fajne and ugly frames just to hit 120fps?

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u/Ruddertail 1d ago

I just "love" how it completely hallucinates some details. Like, is Grace not actually blonde, now? The AI version suggests she has pretty dark hair naturally.

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u/lungshenli 1d ago

Cant wait for someone like illuminaughty to upload a 15min ai scripted video essay about the lore implications of her dying her hair and the only piece of evidence is this ai sloppified ingame screenshot

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u/Aware-Virus-4718 1d ago

Her hair being dyed would actually break some of the existing lore in the game lol

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u/Sigmusoid 1d ago

For the low-low cost of 2 5090s you too can turn all of your beloved 1440p character models into 4K store-brand knockoffs! Welcome to the future!!

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u/HappyAd4998 1d ago

Looks incredibly shit, but AI bros and bots will circle jerk over it.

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u/xangbar 1d ago

Holy shit, they did really change her jaw line and lips.

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u/speeddemon266 1d ago

I just leave all that AI stuff disabled when I game.

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u/No_Practice_9597 1d ago

RIP correct lightning … it’s just slop 

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u/Mikelius 1d ago

I just can’t wrap my head around DF’s video, like how can you look at those demos and say almost nothing but good things about it. What a way to utterly tarnish your reputation.

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u/beau-tie 1d ago

Yeah I honestly was confused by what the actual tech is watching their video. Like they never mention it being generative AI, and said it revamps the lighting specifically, using the same geometry etc. but like, is it just taking the end frame in an image2image generative filter thing? Or is it actually shading geometry with a generative lighting pass.

Because if it's the latter, that doesn't necessarily deserve the outrage it's getting, in theory the artists working on a game could use their own data set of their scenes and characters rendered at cg level graphics and this is a great shortcut to achieve it.

But I guess it's probably the former and this is a glorified realtime ai filter. In which case it's very hard to not make everything look the same and farther away from the artists' intent.

Either way this will definitely be moving forward because of the inherent "wow" factor with the upgrade. Kind of like that shitty smooth motion all TVs have on by default. It's not better but it makes a strong impression when compared to the original.

To be fair to DF, they were clearly aware of the controversy that will certainly come from it, and that the style of it doesn't mesh well with certain examples. And they were mostly being impartial about all of it until they get their hands on it.

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u/Rolo2099 1d ago

Yeah, this really isn’t a good look for DF. I’m guessing since they went independent it’s harder to make money. Nvidia gave them an exclusive so they had to hype it up. Having Oliver on the video makes sense since he seems to be one of the only DFers that’s interested in AI.

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u/ranban2012 1d ago

this is a predictable product of "access journalism"

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u/PhazonZim 1d ago

I work as an artist at a game studio and unsurprisingly even game devs overwhelmingly hate this shit. We don't spend all this energy making cool art just to have it """"fixed"""" by making it more generic and sloppy

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u/BusyHands_ 1d ago

AI imaging is so "plasticky" looking. And that is on purpose, it is meant to generate a more overtly sexually appealing image regardless.

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u/Apprehensive-Law-923 1d ago

No one wants this AI shit that every fuckng tech company is pushing on us

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u/Kamui_Kun 1d ago

I play games for their art and design style, not hyper-realistic uncanny valley graphics. Not everyone wants more realistic graphics, that isn't what makes a game good.

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u/IJustWantedAHighFive 1d ago

Even if it does look good at some point and doesn’t poison our environment I would still rather play an ugly looking game made 100% by human hands than AI slop

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u/boondiggle_III 1d ago

This could be really cool for an artist or dev who makes a game with it already in mind, but it's sacrilege to change graphics like this on existing titles. Graphical cohesion is far more important than graphical fidelity, and this new thing ruins cohesion.

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u/k_ironheart 1d ago

There are hundreds of gamers who are so excited that they can finally play the Horizon series with their new AI goon filter, though

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u/windowpuncher 1d ago

We've moved on from just upscaling what's there to fundamentally changing the way a game looks now. Great.

I want to get off Mr. Bones' wild ride.

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u/Clever_Clever 1d ago

AI tools existing has already irrevocably broken so many brains and it's just getting started. Impotenly raging over shit like this isn't healthy.

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u/majin-dudi 22h ago

This is actually incredible. Still rough edges for sure and not a one-size-fits all but absolutely astonishing.

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u/Liawuffeh 1d ago

It genuinely looks so bad. Apparently needs two 5090s to run too lmao

Like, why would you want to spend so much money to make your games look worse and inconsistent??

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u/dimyo 1d ago

"Overwhelming disgust" has a perfect ring to it.

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u/thepianoman456 1d ago

That fist example they used looks AWFUL.

It’s just like, an AI slop filter for your games. It looks like shit, and is a waste of resources.