truly intelligent flat screens?

Artificial intelligence is gaining ground. We are starting to find AI almost everywhere: in certain smartphones, certain computers, but also in new flat screens presented as AI TVs, like the 2024 range launched by Samsung. But what is the point of having artificial intelligence in a flat screen?

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.

Sharp images that fill the entire screen

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.

20% less energy?

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.