Nvidia DLSS 5's AI yassification filter reportedly escapes containment ahead of release, thanks to modders digging files out of NBA 2K27

Set for an official release this autumn

Nvidia's DLSS 5 neural rendering tech, AKA the AI filter which was widely criticised upon reveal earlier this year for creepily yassifying a bunch of game characters' faces, is reportedly up and running prior to its planned release later this year. The folks to thank or blame for this are modders, who've found the files needed to get the tech's neural rendering working in Control.

According to Videocardz, the PC early access version of NBA 2K27 - 2K's basketball sim and wannabe sporty Crusader Kings - contained a library called nvngx_dlssnr.dll. Some runtime files for DLSS 5's neural rendering were allegedly found within it, which members of modding community called RenoDX have subsequently gotten running in Remedy's wander through a government facility where nothing at all weird is going on.

As you might expect for an implementation cobbled together unofficially from files found tucked behind LeBron James' ear, this one appears to only apply to character models, with HDR not working and apparently a severe impact on performance even while using a beefy RTX 5070 Ti graphics card. One RenoDX contributor going by the handle speedlemur has apparently said it's essentially unusable in its current state. You can reportedly at least switch between seven different styles of yassification filtering for the characters' faces.

It's highly unlikely Nvidia's full release version works that shonkily, but what this experiment does seem to have been useful for is learning a little more about how DLSS 5 might work and which games it could work with. For instance, the modders claimed that it seems to use the same inputs already on offer for established DLSS upscaling and that games running on Unreal Engine 5 might be relatively easy to get up and running with it.

Personally, all I care about is that the face-yassifying tech comes with an off switch, so I don't have to risk getting flashbacks to dodgy YouTube ads or the slop I keep seeing on social media every time I fire up a game that supports the latest in graphical messing around. For a more nuanced take on DLSS 5 than that, make sure to check out Michael Cook's piece for us on the tech. Or, read up on the DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction tech that Nvidia released this week.