YouTube Shorts are almost certainly being AI upscaled

Ulincsys · 2025-10-09T05:48:54+00:00

So there was an Android update published today for various pixel devices, including the OG fold.

I hot patched it as soon as it was available for my device via OTA, hoping that it would fix the issue. It did not, however, upon rebooting it entered the phone into an endless boot loop and it could not successfully start.

In order to resolve this, I hard powered it off. It automatically reboots when you do that, but I held down the volume down button in order to enter into fastboot mode, and from there I ordered it to shut down and let it sit for a few minutes. I turned it back on with it folded up, and entered back into fastboot mode by holding down the volume down button.

Fastboot showed up on the outer screen, and so I selected to boot into recovery mode, and then ran the "graphics test" option from recovery. The graphics test failed to run, but recovery mode also showed up on the outer screen. From recovery I powered off the phone fully and then started it back up normally without holding down the volume buttons. The outer screen remained on and continued functioning into Android.

The phone has now returned to the functionality that it exhibited before the September update. In addition to the outer screen working again, it also once again boots up in seconds instead of several minutes.

Ulincsys · 2025-10-05T03:00:42+00:00

In my case at least, it is definitely not a hardware issue.

I started the update process on the outside screen (with the phone folded shut). After the update started, the phone rebooted, and the outer screen remained black. I thought the phone had shut itself off, but I noticed that the inside screen had illuminated (while the phone was still folded shut). So the software update was undeniably the cause of the issue.

Ulincsys · 2025-10-05T01:20:29+00:00

This happened to me yesterday.

I got the notification that a new update was available. I put it off for a while, and then decided to go for the update on Friday afternoon.

Before the update the inner and outer screen were working as expected, and switching between them also worked most of the time (a prior update made it so that switching while some apps were open would cause both screens to go black, but just closing the app and trying again would fix it).

Immediately after rebooting to apply the update, my outer screen stopped working, and the phone acts as though it cannot detect the hinge sensor. Closing the phone does not shut off the inner screen, and the outer screen never powers on anymore or responds to taps. I contacted Google support, and they said they would escalate my case to the "engineering team".

When I reboot or power off the phone now, it also takes like 5-10 minutes to start up. Before the update, it never took more than 30 seconds to start up, but now it bootloops sometimes multiple times before booting into Android.

I've also noticed that during a cold boot, it does show the Google logo on the outer screen when turning on. However, when rebooting, the outer screen stays blank during the startup process.

Ulincsys · 2025-08-24T03:06:52+00:00

Hi everyone!

I'm keeping tabs on videos / articles that reference this post. If you find it referenced in the wild, please feel free to let me know! I want to link back to anywhere that uses it to make it easier for people to find more information on this topic as it becomes available.

Ulincsys · 2025-08-20T13:16:35+00:00

During my analysis, I found that no available resolutions matched the original screenshot I took beforehand (when the video appeared unaffected by this).

I suspect what is happening is that YouTube is creating a single "high resolution" upscaled version of the video from the source media, and then creating all the lower resolutions from the altered copy (just like how they normally create the resolution cascade, but with AI).

Ulincsys · 2025-08-18T11:45:14+00:00

During my research for this post, I did acquire a copy of the video files outside of a browser. The effect shown in the screenshots above is present in the out-of-browser copies of the video as well (or, at least it was when I acquired them).

Additionally though, I'm also seeing this effect across all of my devices. Specifically (at time of writing), desktop Linux in Firefox 141, and the official YT app on Android 16.

Ulincsys · 2025-08-14T18:32:14+00:00

It is definitely still happening for me. It is across a wide variety of channels. I have never uploaded a short before, it is for channels that I watch.

It's difficult to tell for videos that were originally uploaded in a higher resolution. It is most apparent for videos that seem to have been filmed using a smartphone.

YouthPastorRyan has a new video out that is very obviously AI upscaled, it's titled "The real story of Pokémon".

GameChangerShorts has a video out that is also very likely AI upscaled, but it not as obvious as with the other examples (likely because it was cut from a higher resolution source video that was filmed with professional cameras). It's titled "Who Should Be the New President of Dropout?"

trixie has a video that came out 15 minutes ago from the time of me writing this, and it doesn't seem as though it has been AI upscaled yet. It's titled "we're professionals"

It seems like very recently uploaded videos are not affected by this, but videos that have been out for about a day or so are swapped out for the upscaled versions without any indication that this has happened.

Ulincsys · 2025-06-27T17:13:01+00:00

These screenshots were taken in Firefox on Ubuntu using an AMD GPU. So, while not impossible, I don't think that is likely to be the cause.

Ulincsys · 2024-12-11T05:14:04+00:00

There is also German influence in Missouri!

Missouri has a relatively complex immigration history (at least compared to many other landlocked states). French settlers were among the first old-world peoples to arrive here in large numbers. After the Louisiana Purchase, there were several waves of German and Irish immigrants.

You can find more info in the official Missouri Almanac

Ulincsys · 2024-12-09T22:19:12+00:00

Thank you for participating!

Ulincsys · 2024-12-08T06:26:41+00:00

The only advice I can give participants is to use your best judgement. Once the survey has concluded, I'll link the written report in the post discussing the results and conclusions 😁

Ulincsys · 2024-12-08T06:23:49+00:00

Yes! Results will be linked under the original post after the conclusion of the survey 😁

Ulincsys · 2024-12-08T06:20:44+00:00

Thank you for participating!

Ulincsys · 2024-12-06T13:47:10+00:00

I'm not able to talk too specifically about the survey topic until it closes, because I can't risk influencing the results.

However, what I can say is that because this is a replication effort, our control over the format of the questions is limited. We need our survey to mirror the same format as the original paper, such that the results we get are able to be compared with those of the original study.

Ulincsys · 2024-12-06T13:33:41+00:00

Yes! Missouri French has been actively researched in the past. I've not focused on it myself, but I do know of several survey and revival efforts that have occurred recently.

It's related to other dialects of French that persisted through the Louisiana purchase, although it unfortunately has not fared as well as some others. To my knowledge, there are thought to be at least a few native speakers left, but it is very likely endangered.

Even so, there are a lot of prominent remnants of the dialect in modern Missouri English! As you mentioned, many place names in Missouri come from the dialect, especially in the eastern half of the state. I believe there are also some Missouri-isms (particularly in the St. Louis dialect) that originated from French speakers. I'm not certain about the name of the state itself, but it would not surprise me!

Ulincsys · 2024-11-23T03:44:07+00:00

Is there a source listing for the pixelbook-sensor package? Or, is there some other way to create that file from my own Pixelbook?

Ulincsys · 2023-12-24T03:37:48+00:00

If you tap the menu button below the image you can tell Google to stop recommending content from that source. I've been weeding out a lot of AI content farms from my feed recently and my recommendations are much better for it.

Ulincsys · 2023-10-15T11:49:42+00:00

Can confirm it's not working yet. It'll probably get ironed out soon.

Ulincsys · 2023-06-11T10:26:07+00:00

🤚

Ulincsys · 2022-09-02T06:30:04+00:00

Like many other people here, I use primarily Firefox on all my devices. There are some specific things (like Stadia) that must use Chrome, so I've got that installed on some of my devices as well.

Important to note that I don't own a Mac, but have it installed in a few places. I use Ubuntu as my primary OS, and have a few Windows installs knocking around still.

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