Machine learning has been used for all kinds of things, but it seems that a fan of Star Trek has decided to take advantage of the technology to help remaster Star Trek: Deep Space Nine to HD. Known to the community as CaptRobau, Stefan Rumen has actually attempted to use AI to remaster content into HD in the past.
His previous efforts include Final Fantasy VII Remako Mod which uses neural networking in AI Gigapixel to help clean up the footage and enlarge the pre-rendered backgrounds. From what we saw with the Final Fantasy remaster, it looked pretty good. According to Rumen, “With tools like AI Gigapixel, I knew it might be possible the low definition frames of DS9 can be scaled up to a higher definition such as 1080p or 4K. It would never be the same as proper remastering, but it would a step in the good direction.”
“So I tried my hand at frame or two, to see what it could do. The results were great. AI Gigapixel uses neural networks trained on real photos. So while it did okay with upscaling the video game renders of Final Fantasy, it did amazing upscaling real-life footage and the bigger budget CGI effects of DS9.”
It actually looks pretty impressive and like Rumen said, while it might not be the same as “proper” remastering, the fact that it can be automated to a certain extent using AI, perhaps in the future the tech could be further improved upon to make it even closer to actual remasters.
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