YouTube will let you opt out of AI upscaling on low-res videos (www.theverge.com)

YouTube announced it will automatically apply AI-powered upscaling (“super resolution”) to videos uploaded at 240p–720p, boosting them to HD and promising 4K support “in the near future.” Crucially, both creators and viewers can opt out: original files and original-resolution versions are retained, upscaling will be clearly labeled in settings, and the change won’t affect videos creators already remastered to 1080p. The rollout is part of a broader TV-focused update that also raises thumbnail limits to 50MB for 4K images, tests larger uploads, and adds TV-first features like QR-based shopping (scan from the TV to buy tagged products), timed product highlights, immersive homepage previews, a new “Shows” layout, and improved contextual search within a creator’s channel. For the AI/ML community, this is a high-profile deployment of neural super-resolution across a massive content library, highlighting real-world tradeoffs between automated enhancement and creator control. The opt-out and labeling set a useful precedent for transparency and consent in ML-driven media processing, while the warning about prior complaints (visual distortions when platforms auto-enhanced content) underscores the need for robust artifact mitigation and perceptual quality metrics. Operationally, expect increased inference and storage costs, new evaluation criteria for upscaling models on diverse user-generated content, and opportunities to study user preferences and UI designs that surface ML interventions to creators and viewers.