The Science of AI Upscaling
Upscaling has historically been a simple mathematical operation: take the existing pixels and average them to create new ones in between. This is called "interpolation" (Bilinear or Bicubic). The problem is, it doesn't add any new information. It just makes the blur bigger.
**AI Upscaling** changes the game. By using a Deep Convolutional Neural Network (such as SRGAN or Real-ESRGAN), the computer actually understands what the image *should* look like.
For example, if you have a low-res image of a brick wall, interpolation just makes blurry gray blobs. But the AI recognizes "this is a brick texture" and generates realistic brick details that weren't in the original pixels. This allows for massive 4x or 8x enlargements that usually retain the sharpness of the original.
