NVIDIA’s preview of DLSS 5 in mid-March has triggered sustained debate around the Artificial Intelligence-powered technology. The response has included criticism from some gamers, a dismissive rebuttal from NVIDIA’s CEO, and an official NVIDIA statement that appeared to challenge earlier claims about what the technology can do.
Chloe Appleby, a program curator at Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum, raised concerns about how DLSS 5 could affect repeatability and the recorded state of a game. The issue goes beyond visual enhancement and reaches into how a game is experienced, documented, and revisited by players and researchers over time.
Appleby said, “If these new Artificial Intelligence technologies become essential for making and playing games, it has the potential to not only add another layer of potential copyright complexity but bring into question what version of a game should be preserved.” She also asked, “Do we preserve both DLSS off and on? Is the DLSS 5 version consistent amongst players and if not, what version represents the collective experience?”
The preservation challenge centers on whether a game remains the same work when key parts of its presentation depend on variable Artificial Intelligence systems. If DLSS 5 changes how a title looks or behaves across different players’ experiences, museums, archives, and researchers may face a harder task in deciding what constitutes the definitive version of that game.
