58% of gamers don't want DLSS 5 altering their games, while others await real-world results

It's been over a month since the 5th iteration of Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) was introduced to the world. To say that the response to the new technology was polarizing would be an understatement. As a reminder, DLSS 5 was described by NVIDIA as the first real-time neural rendering technology that brings photorealism to games. When the sample photos and videos were dropped, the response from gamers was overwhelmingly negative.

Now, TechPowerUp has published a new poll asking readers to share their opinions on the technology. The premise was simple: there were four options, and readers could select one. The readers were to choose from "AI shouldn't be altering games", "Actually better than native," "Need to see real game results", and "Only if it boosts FPS." The poll gathered 20,000 answers, and the breakdown is rather interesting.

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The largest answer by far was "AI shouldn't be altering games," with 58% of the votes. This is the expected winner, and the reasons behind it are pretty self-explanatory. However, perhaps more interestingly, the second-place winner was the "Need to see real game results" answer, with 28% of the votes. This is a sizable chunk of a rather tech-savvy audience waiting for real-world results before making a decision. The other two options received 6% and 8% of the votes, which doesn't significantly affect the ratio.

To recap, the reaction to DLSS 5's original launch was rather mixed. While some gamers appreciated the technological advancement and liked some of the results, others criticized the new rendering technique for being too heavy-handed with its changes, especially in faces. Not to mention, some faces were altered to fit a typical Western beauty standard, regardless of the developer's intent, which opens a whole new can of worms.

Gamers were largely disappointed in NVIDIA for this feature, calling it an "AI slop filter." NVIDIA, however, responded quickly by saying gamers don't know what they're talking about, which is always a nice thing to hear from a trillion-dollar corporation. What's perhaps more important is that game studios were caught off guard by NVIDIA's announcement, which conflicts with NVIDIA's claims that DLSS 5 will help developers. Many studios, such as Capcom, have since doubled down on their original designs.

DLSS 5 will reportedly launch this fall; however, don't expect any fancy photorealistic faces if you're running anything other than an RTX 50-series graphics card.