At GTC 2026, Nvidia announced DLSS 5, a more advanced version of its AI upscaling technology, and the response has been resoundingly negative.

Rather than just improving a game's resolution and frame rate with the help of AI, DLSS 5 actually changes a title's graphics, adding detail to characters' hair and faces, and even a game's environment and lighting. The resulting effect... isn't great to put it lightly, adding an unnecessary AI sheen to visuals that many are calling AI slop.

Check out the video below, and you'll see what I mean.

However, during a recent Q&A event at GTC, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang explained that this impression is misguided. Taking a question from Tom's Hardware's Paul Alcorn, Huang said, "Well, first of all, they're completely wrong," and reiterated that game developers will have control over how the DLSS 5 is implemented in their titles.

"The reason for that is because, as I have explained very carefully, DLSS 5 fuses controllability of the geometry and textures and everything about the game with generative AI," said Huang. He added that developers will be able to "fine-tune the generative AI" to match their style" and and say that it "doesn't change the artistic control."

"It’s not post-processing, it’s not post-processing at the frame level, it’s generative control at the geometry level," said Huang.

The AI slopification of gaming is coming, whether we like it or not

Hopefully, most developers opt for a more low-key version of DLSS 5's AI generation features

While this is likely accurate, the aesthetic changes shown in the DLSS 5 trailer Nvidia recently released don't really support that perspective or paint the upcoming AI upscaling technology in a positive light. For example, the Resident Evil Requiem transformation focused on Grace Ashcroft looks positively otherworldly with DLSS 5 on, and the same can be said for most of the comparisons, particularly the one featuring characters and environments in Starfield.

It will all come down to what the technology looks like when it launches, and the level of control developers will afford Nvidia over the look of their titles with DLSS 5 on, if Huang's statements about the upcoming AI upscaling feature prove accurate. Either way, I can't help but feel like the wave of AI slop that's progressively infected the internet over the past few months is now coming for the gaming space.

Nvidia recently confirmed that DLSS 4.5 with 6x Multi Frame Generation launches on March 31st for RTX 50-series GPUs.