The announcement of NVIDIA's DLSS 5 technology at the GTC 2026 conference caused a stir in the gaming community and social networks. Despite positive reviews from specialized journalists and developers, the new version of upscaling and rendering was at the center of heated debates surrounding the use of AI in games.
On the one hand, authoritative publications such as Digital Foundry, as well as industry representatives, highly appreciated the demonstration of the technology. Bethesda emphasized that DLSS 5 remains fully under the control of developers and is an optional tool.
However, some users on social networks sharply criticized the novelty, calling it "just an AI filter" and accusing the company of distorting the original artistic intent of the developers.
The technology was defended by industry veteran, artist Georgian Avasilcutei, who worked on games such as Remember Me, Life is Strange, Dishonored 2, and Hogwarts Legacy. He strongly criticized the opponents of DLSS 5, stating that many of them do not understand how the technology actually works.
According to the artist, DLSS 5 is not a generative AI that creates new images "from scratch." The technology uses existing data from the game (geometry, textures, and light sources) to improve the lighting and shading of the scene. He emphasized that it is not about "hallucinations" of the neural network, but about more accurate processing of existing information.
As an example, Avasilcutei cited his own work: a comparison of a character model with regular rasterization and with ray tracing. With more accurate lighting and improved shaders, the skin and hair look different—so much so that the character seems different, although his geometry remains unchanged. According to him, this is exactly the kind of improvement that DLSS 5 strives to provide, but with less resource consumption.
In his criticism of opponents, the artist even referred to the Dunning-Kruger effect, hinting that many critics are at the peak of the "Mount Stupid" and judge the technology superficially, having only heard the word "AI."
In essence, the argument of DLSS 5 supporters boils down to an idea familiar to any artist and photographer: the perception of a face strongly depends on lighting.