- Nvidia has announced DLSS 5 at GTC 2026
- This is a “real-time neural rendering model” (AI) to revamp lighting and improve graphics in PC games
- The reaction has been broadly negative across social media, with plenty of concerns about the direction Nvidia is now heading in
Nvidia has revealed DLSS 5 at GTC 2026, and is calling the next-gen tech the “most significant breakthrough” for computer graphics since real-time ray tracing.
Nvidia announced in a press release that DLSS 5 brings in a “real-time neural rendering model that infuses pixels with photoreal lighting and materials”, comparing the end result to Hollywood visual effects.
So, this is essentially about taking a game’s graphics and sprucing them up with AI to improve the lighting and overall look to be more realistic. This is not about frame rate boosting or upscaling (as with DLSS 4.5), but polishing up the visuals to be photorealistic — the same game assets are used, we’re told, just with very different AI-powered lighting.
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NVIDIA DLSS5 Neural Rendering looks pretty powerful #GTC pic.twitter.com/eLZtaiqEozMarch 16, 2026
The best way to get a handle on what DLSS 5 actually does, of course, is to look at some of the early images Nvidia has shared showing the ‘before and after’ — check out the above pic surfaced by our own Lance Ulanoff on X (from GTC), or the below example from Resident Evil Requiem shared by Nvidia (accompanying its DLSS 5 press release).
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, commented that: “DLSS 5 is the GPT moment for graphics – blending handcrafted rendering with generative AI to deliver a dramatic leap in visual realism while preserving the control artists need for creative expression.”
DLSS 5 is set to launch later this year, in “the fall” — so perhaps as early as September — and it’ll be for RTX 5000 graphics cards only as you might expect.
To say there’s been a groundswell of negative reaction to DLSS 5 would be an understatement — on Reddit and Bluesky in particular — so let’s dive into why that’s the case.
Analysis: AI slop accusations
Now, DLSS 5 does look like powerful tech, and Digital Foundry had a hands-on with the feature in a bunch of games over at GTC, coming away impressed. And indeed if you watch that YouTube video, some of the footage does look rather smart. I’d highlight Oblivion Remastered, where the lighting breathes fresh life into the stone walls and buildings — though not everyone agrees on that.
The problem comes with preserving artistic intent here. Huang specifically mentions that this might be AI overhauling a game’s graphics, but that Nvidia intends to preserve the “control artists need for creative expression” — and remember, the game assets aren’t being altered here, just the lighting, Team Green assures us.
Still, the Resident Evil Requiem screenshot in particular is causing a lot of controversy, most obviously because it’s changing Grace’s looks radically in terms of adding lipstick for example (and altering her hair color markedly). It ends up with a whole different — and unwanted — vibe for many.
The overall look of game characters given a DLSS 5 makeover feels rather unreal, too, in an uncanny valley way. Yes, everything’s a lot sharper and more like a photo, but that isn’t always good if it looks overbearing in that respect, or it messes with the ambience and atmosphere of the original visuals. This holds true for background elements as well as foreground characters, and there’s plenty of hate for both on Reddit.
As one Redditor commented: “Surely this will result in a look that the artist/developer didn’t intend? It’s like putting an ugly AI filter over the artist’s work. This seems dumb as hell to me.”
I also worry about the lighting looking too intense and overblown, and colors too saturated — a bit like when you take a photo on your phone and stick a filter over it to jazz things up, and it’s just too much.
Clearly, this has stirred up a hornet’s nest of reaction, with some of the most common refrains being that ‘we don’t want an AI slop filter’. Gamers are worried that this points in a dangerous direction for the future of games — one where developers don’t have as much control over the art direction of their products.
There’s another concern which hasn’t been as widely picked up, too, namely that the tech demo for DLSS 5 is actually running on two RTX 5090 graphics cards, as per Nvidia’s FAQ. Yes, a single RTX 5090 is not enough to cope with the overhauled lighting effects here — Nvidia needed to use a pair of them, with one of the GPUs dedicated to running DLSS 5 (and the other actually rendering the game).
That clearly suggests that whatever DLSS 5 is doing behind the scenes is seriously intensive work. Of course, this is still early days, and DLSS 5 is still in ‘early preview’ — when it’s finished, the tech will be optimized to run on a single GPU (so Team Green isn’t ushering in a return to SLI setups).
Similarly, there will be a lot of fine-tuning and other honing done to DLSS 5 in terms of the image produced, too, so we need to wait before passing a final judgment here. This is unlikely to dissuade AI skeptics, mind you, who have very much made up their minds already.
Time will tell, but meanwhile, I expect heavily liked comments such as “your RAM died for this” (a comment from @canestrini808 on Digital Foundry’s YouTube video) or “I thought this video was an April Fool’s joke, but it’s still March” (from @lukas0999) will continue to hold sway.
We’ve reached out to Nvidia to see if the company had any comment on the negative reactions flying around, and will update this article if we hear back.
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