As the broader games industry comes together in condemnation of Nvidia’s DLSS 5 AI-slopificator technology, one man is brave enough to step forward and say something against the grain, to puff out his chest and speak up for the little billionaires. And that man is Daniel Vávra, one-time GamerGater and co-founder of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 studio Warhorse. He sees this leap forward for technology as a replacement for the expense of raytracing—you know, once it gets over its initial struggles. Because sometimes you just have to believe.
“I can imagine in the future devs will be able to train this tech for particular art style or specific people faces and it might replace expensive raytracing etc.,” says the Czech game director.
That really ought to be genAI’s catchphrase—”I can imagine in the future”—given its purported benefits haven’t yet trickled down into the present. Vávra suggests this is the case for DLSS 5, too, despite Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently declaring the new version of its upscaling tech could already allow developers to maintain bespoke designs and artistic intent.
He was adamant it wasn’t simply redrawing a 2D view of a game’s assets as if being passed through a TikTok beauty filter. That framing was later undercut by the company’s own messaging. But what if that wasn’t the case? What if DLSS 5 was something different and better and good?! Just imagine that future.
According to Vávra, the tech is just having “a little uncanny beginning,” much like how the generic, clumsily plagiarized writing of ChatGPT, or the sheen-faced, weird-eyed, object-impermanence of any number of genAI video engines, are just simply working through their difficult toddler years. It’s all about to be incredible, and what a time that will be to live through.
I can imagine in the future devs will be able to train this tech for particular art style or specific people faces and it might replace expensive raytracing etc. This is just a little uncanny beginning. No way haters will stop this. Its way more than a soap opera effect every tv… https://t.co/SUdxhy6Arj
— Daniel Vávra ⚔ (@DanielVavra) March 23, 2026
Although I’ll tell you what: try telling that to the haters! The ones trying to stop us from being able to live in this AI-crafted nirvana. What about them? “No way haters will stop this,” says Vávra. Phew! “It’s way more than a soap opera effect every tv has when you turn motion smoothing on.”
God, yes, that! He’s right! Well, he’s wrong, as in he says the opposite of what’s true, but it’s correct about the awful soap opera effect, isn’t it? When something shot on celluloid at 24 frames per second is interpolated by your TV, rendering it looking like it was shot on camcorder on the set of Days of Our Lives.
It’s a peculiar instinct to want to aggressively stan for something everyone else has already reasonably been grossed out by. Especially when DLSS was one of those rare moments when AI tech provides a functional use that allows people to play games at higher fidelity on less powerful machines without this ridiculous update. It seems reasonably likely that level-headed ongoing development of DLSS could see such code continue to incrementally improve, allowing developers to create ever-more impressive-looking games without a massive hardware cost for players, and all without the need for genAI drivel redrawing the frames to make every game look like a Facebook ad.
Vávra joins the esteemed company of Mike Ybarra, who recently told Crimson Desert developers Pearl Abyss to “man up” after the studio apologized for having littered the game with crappy genAI art, in what will presumably soon become a super-team of avoidable games developers standing up for the billionaires who’ve gambled their entire companies on technology that cannot and will not ever achieve its idiotic claims. Presumably they’ll also be there to wipe away the tears when the bubble bursts in the next few years, as investors start to demand returns that cannot be created.