In a flat screen used as a television, artificial intelligence is mainly used to improve what is calledupscaling in English: converting lower resolution images – low or high definition – into higher resolution 4K or 8K – and upscaling them. Samsung says it has integrated, basically, around a hundred different treatments and filters, depending on the type of images (sport, cinema, video game, etc.). AI and machine learningin other words self-learning, will allow you to go much further.
The challenge is that low resolution images, such as Full HD, occupy the entire screen on a 4K screen with a resolution 4 times higher – it is 16 times higher in the case of an 8K screen – without lacking sharpness, without looking washed out or worse, blurry. To convert from Full HD to 4K, you must therefore go – artificially – from 2 to 8 million points in each image. And on an 8K screen, the challenge is even greater since you have to go from 2 to 32 million pixels in each image.
Let’s take the example of the new Samsung screens, specifying that the processor of the high-end model, the Neo QLED 8K, has 8 times more neural networks. And let’s stay on the Full HD to 4K conversion. 25 times per second, the AI will take each of the 2 million points that exist in the Full HD image, to create three others.
How ? By studying adjacent points, taking into account – also – the previous and following images, to create as much detail as possible, increasing sharpness and reducing visual noise. This scaling technology is not new: it already existed before AI, but in a much more basic form.
Artificial intelligence will also improve the sharpness of moving objects: football, tennis ball, etc. It will increase the spatialization of the sound, for an even more immersive sensation. And it will optimize energy consumption, with a reduction in electrical needs estimated by Samsung at 20%.
The last issue is obviously linked to marketing. All arguments are good for flat screen brands, even during a year already as exceptional as 2024, with the Olympic Games in Paris, and the Euro football in particular. Samsung is not the only manufacturer to focus on AI: we also find them at TCL, Hisense and at LG, Samsung’s Korean rival, which is pushing its ThinQ AI technology. As for Sony, the Japanese brand highlights the 4K X-Reality Pro but, this time, without mentioning artificial intelligence.
