Microsoft Edge to Upscale Video Using AI

Microsoft today announced that it will add a new feature to Microsoft Edge that will upscale videos using AI.

“Have you ever wished you could watch your favorite videos in high definition, even if they were originally recorded in lower quality?” a new post by the Microsoft Edge Team reads. “Well, now you can, thanks to a new feature we are experimenting with in Edge Canary: video super resolution (VSR).”

According to Microsoft, VSR uses machine learning (ML) to enhance the quality of video viewed in the web browser by removing blocky compression artifacts and upscaling the video resolution without sacrificing bandwidth. It will work with video streaming sites like YouTube, but not video protected by Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies.

The bad news? It requires some hefty hardware requirements—a PC with an Nvidia RTX 20/30/40 series or AMD RX5700-RX7800 series GPU—and only works when the PC is off battery power. Upscaled videos must be less than 720p resolution, and the height and width of the video must both be greater than 192 pixels.

When available, this feature is enabled automatically and you will see an “HD” icon in the address bar to let you configure its use. Microsoft is currently testing the feature in the Canary channel, but only with a small set of users at first. It will expand to additional customers over the coming weeks and will likely support other GPUs in the future.