Hacker News Reader

Comment by aetherspawn | Hacker News Reader

People don’t want to be impersonated by deepfake.

Artists don’t want their art style copied.

Writers don’t want to be out of business or have the price of their work degraded by GPT spam.

There are a lot of things people don’t want AI to do, but I can’t want for them to use AI to remaster Star Trek Next Gen (and other old sci-fi) into 4K. This kind of application hurts nobody.

View on HN

The pictures I see from iPhones look like a better photographer took them zoomed out but gross and make zoomed in because of all the weird filtering. Isn't that basically what AI upsampling does? It doesn't add information, so it's somehow imagining what an optimal image will look like. Personally I'd rather pass when it comes to video.

I would be so, so happy if Apple would just give users the option to turn off all the AI crap on the camera. It sucks so bad. I have an 8MP Canon point and shoot from 2008 that takes way better pictures than my iphone 15. And I'm not surprised that a larger sensor with larger, better glass takes better pictures with finer detail and less grain, I just wish more people understood what they're buying.

I've seen a few "4K" AI-upscaled movies and they look horrible. Rubber faces and uncanny valley effects every few seconds. What a shame. I'll stick with 1080P on blu-ray.

I'm curious why you would want 4K in this case? I was over at a family member's place and threw on an episode of TNG to kill time. I was trying to figure out why everything looked so cheap: Picard's uniform, other costumes, the alien makeup. It was because they'd increased the definition past what the sets, costumes, and makeup were designed for. Personally I prefer the fuzzy look which appears more 'realistic' to me.

I saw a fan-made AI 4K remaster (Star Trek Borg) and it was a lot better than the remastered Star Trek on Amazon prime.

I think the AI adds crispness that was not captured due to limitations in the cameras (and skill of the cameramen) at the time. Possibly it also fakes textures to make them more visually appealing.

This is a good point, but AI also will allow us to enhance the video in other ways than upscaling, such as inserting (or replacing) CGI / special effects. We should be able to really up the visuals.

I don’t understand who the audience is for 4K up scales. I’ve never seen one that looks better than the original resolution, and any halfway decent screen will be able to match your content’s resolution and framerate. I consider myself a quality-enthusiast when it comes to media and I won’t touch something upscaled. Some stuff was meant to be seen in SD.

> I can’t want for them to use AI to remaster Star Trek Next Gen (and other old sci-fi) into 4K. This kind of application hurts nobody.

If the remaster only improves video and audio fidelity sure. But they may also swap out characters, personalities, and plot points, based on the whims of the studio.

AI controlled by major powerbrokers is going to further the aims of those power brokers.

If there’s a good tool floating around to do the upscaling, I bet committed fandoms are about as likely as major companies to gain access. Superfans wont care about copyright. The only way that wouldn’t seem likely to me is if the company owns or unilaterally controls the tool, which we haven’t seen any indication is a likely business model.

The original Star Wars trilogy is now ruined because of overzealous “remastering”

Personally I’d rather AI be used to help fix society and health issues. Help people thrive and survive, things like that.

Human problems can only be solved by humans, not technology.

Is this an accurate representation of your meaning? Because technology has been relentlessly solving or making progress on solving human problems for thousands of years. Agriculture alone is a series of technological improvements which have solved an unfathomably number of instances of the "I have no food" problem, one of the most recurring and fundamental problems of all life. Avoiding diseases, healing injuries, trying to get three states over in a hurry because you heard your grandfather is about to die, communicating without being intercepted, satisfying wanderlust, making communication easier - all of these are very human problems which have been fully or partially solved by technology.

I’m not sure that’s true, are you suggesting the internet hasn’t solved a single human problem?

Nope. It hasn't solved anything.

Wow, that's a pretty strong opinion. You do see that you are on a website on the internet right now, having conversations and discussions with strangers who could be from anywhere in the world, about technology and stuff that never would have happened before the internet.

Agreed, but these things are actually harder than upscaling star trek unfortunately.

It's not an either-or. People will try it for all sorts of things and keep the ones that are useful.

FYI there's professionally-done remasters of TNG into 1080 - it was shot on film originally, not video. And there's a decent-quality fan upscale of DS9; it was shot on film, too, but the remaster of TNG didn't sell all that great and the studios didn't want to spend the money on DS9.

Wasn't TNG shot on film and remastered [yes: 0]? Not sure if it made it to 4K, and it probably could use some AI clean up. I did read that DS9 was scaled up with "AI" because it was mostly CGI. I read on reddit that fans are even doing it, with mixed results.

[0] https://trekmovie.com/trek-remastered/tng-remastered/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com