Nvidia’s new AI tool is giving female game characters a makeover – and gamers are pushing back
Nvidia’s new AI tool is giving female game characters a makeover – and gamers are pushing back
Publish Date: 2026-03-26 15:06:00
Source Domain: theconversation.com
Last week leading chipmaker Nvidia announced DLSS-5 (Deep Learning Super Sampling), a new artificial intelligence (AI) rendering tool it describes as a “breakthrough in visual fidelity for games”. The software takes low-resolution images and uses AI to upscale them, adding what Nvidia calls “photoreal lighting and materials”.
The tool is designed to make video games look more photorealistic, but the examples Nvidia chose to show off the technology revealed something unexpected: the AI doesn’t just makes images sharper and glossier, it also makes characters significantly more conventionally attractive.
The growing backlash is about more than makeup. It points to a broader anxiety about what happens when AI is given control over creative decisions – and whose idea of “better” gets encoded in the algorithms.
A ‘beauty filter’ for games?
Nvidia showcased the technology using Grace Ashcroft, the protagonist of the recently released Resident Evil Requiem.
Before-and-after comparisons showed the software changing her hair colour, adding defined eyebrows, lip tint, and facial contouring. Some gamers quickly labelled it a “beauty filter”, criticising the way it applies what looks like heavy makeup and reshapes her face to be more conventionally attractive.
Resident Evil Requiem’s Grace, without DLSS-5 (left) and with (right).
Nvidia / Capcom
The choice of Grace to showcase the technology is worth examining. Resident Evil Requiem features all kinds of monsters and gritty characters, and Nvidia could have used any of them.
The decision to highlight a young, conventionally attractive female character and then make her more glamorous feels pointed. Representation of women in games has been a flashpoint issue for years.
Female characters in games are poorly treated
Historically, female characters in games were depicted as either helpless and weak, or as…
