RAISR: Is Google’s AI-driven image resizing algorithm ‘dishonest’?

Google has released the fruits of new research into upscaling low-resolution images using machine learning to ‘fill in’ the missing details. Compared to the hoary standards Photoshop users have been used to for over twenty years, the results are quite impressive.

RAISR (Rapid and Accurate Image Super Resolution) uses machine learning to develop ‘routes’ from low to higher resolution versions of an originally small image, based on sampling the differences between smaller and (genuinely) higher-resolution versions of data training images in a set.