What is NVIDIAs DLSS 5 and why is it so controversial?

If you've spent any time on gaming social media this week, you'll see a lot of comparison screenshots of video games.

The most common ones you'll see are split-screen comparisons between an OG shot of the game and one that's slightly more detailed, with a promise that this will be the "future" of gaming.

This Tweet is currently unavailable.

It might be loading or has been removed.

That's DLSS 5, NVIDIA's latest and most ambitious version of its AI upscaling technology, officially launching Sept.

3.

It's exclusive to the company's RTX 50-series graphics cards and arrives with just one game: NBA 2K27 .

It's also become one of the more divisive pieces of gaming tech in recent memory, centered around whether AI should be allowed to redraw what a game looks like at all.

Our Big Guessing Game is Back! This is your final chance to enter to win a new Apple Watch .

What is DLSS? DLSS has existed for years as a way to boost frame rates by having an AI model fill in detail rather than rendering every pixel natively.

The new version goes further.

As we reported when it was first announced, DLSS 5 aims to use AI to add more realistic lighting and materials to a scene in real-time.

That means it can actively repaint lighting, textures, and even character faces on the fly.

When NVIDIA first unveiled the tech back in March, the company called it a landmark moment, framed as its biggest graphics breakthrough since real-time ray tracing debuted in 2018.