Sweet merciful glob, NVIDIA decided DLSS 5 shouldn’t just fake resolution anymore — now it wants to fake lighting (and apparently faces) with what they’re calling “real-time, 3D guided neural rendering.” In this video I tear into what they showed: side-by-sides where characters suddenly get the full Snapchat/Instagram beautification treatment. Bigger eyes, fuller lips, different eye colour, different hair vibe — and somehow we’re meant to pretend that’s “photorealistic lighting” and not an AI slop filter steamrolling the original art direction. I also go after Digital Foundry’s coverage, because watching rendering-tech guys look at blatantly altered faces and go “it’s the same assets, just different lighting” is… mate. Come on. Even the environmental shots they praise look overcooked: oversharpened, overcontrasted, flattened gradients — like those early “cinematic” reshade mods that crank sliders to eleven and call it realism. And the cherry on top: the demo needs two RTX 5090s — one basically just to run the AI pass — so don’t let anyone sell you “reasonable performance” with a straight face. Bottom line: DLSS has been a clever trick for resolution, but this? This is slop-tracing, and if this is the future, I want no part of it.