Many sitcoms from the 1980s and 1990s evoke warm memories of fuzzy colors on a staticky CRT monitor. So Netflix adding A Different World to its catalog seemed like a call to nostalgia and flip-up glasses, at least until the AI-assisted upscaling appeared on screen.
With this AI enhancement no one asked for, Hillman College sometimes looked like it was a little melted, with off-putting distortions of design all over, and text reworked into what looked like an alien language. Meanwhile, the faces and hands of the cast would occasionally warp like something was crawling underneath their skins.
Admittedly, I had been slightly braced for it after seeing TikTok videos highlighting the warped results of AI's influence on the show. If anything, those videos undersold the results of AI upscaling.
Upscaling is when you take old, low-resolution footage and make it fit modern high-definition screens. When done properly, with computer-assisted artists going through the footage, it can be a subtle but effective way to make classic shows look a little sharper. When done badly, you get what looks like inhuman dentures and throw pillows from another planet. To be fair, Netflix may not be solely to blame. A Different World is owned by Carsey-Werner. But Netflix still puts this uncanny valley exploration on subscribers' screens.
@shanselman ♬ original sound - Scott Hanselman
@angelicjor ♬ original sound - Jor 🍉🌱🌻
AI Failure
This is becoming a pattern. AI is creeping into entertainment in ways that sound great on paper but turn out to be deeply weird and unsettling in practice. Just look at what Prime Video did with its AI-generated dubbing. Though not quite as egregiously awful, it's still got a ways to go if you want to hear all your favorite performers sounding like they speak a foreign language without it possibly giving you a headache.
There's also Netflix creating entirely new elements out of AI, as with its documentary American Murder: The Family Next Door, which used AI to recreate the voice of Gabby Petito reading her own journal entries. Her family gave their permission, but that doesn’t make it any less unnerving.
AI has incredible potential as a tool, but that’s the key word. Deployed without human direction, you'll get some bizarre, unsettling choices, even if some of the final output looks alright. So, while AI can help clean up old footage, there should still be more humans in the loop ensuring that characters’ faces don’t turn into Picasso paintings.
For entertainment companies desperate to cut costs and speed up production, these flaws may seem worth the cost-savings. They hear “AI can help upscale old shows” and think, "Great, no need for expensive remastering, AI can do the whole thing automatically." AI isn’t a genie granting HD wishes for SD shows.
Some people may not even notice the issue, but it doesn't take a close inspection to see the upscaled A Different World as less a fond memory of the past and more of a mangled vision of the future. If this is the best AI can do without more human oversight, maybe Netflix should wait until the technology is good enough before slapping it on classic TV and accept that the reason people watch old shows has nothing to do with the crispness of the picture.
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