DLSS 5 Leak Shows Nvidia's AI Filter Can Really Mess With Your Games

Ever wondered what it would be like to slap Nvidia's next-gen AI filter onto your favorite games? Well, thanks to a leak, some modders have done just that—and the results are... interesting, to say the least.

Nvidia hasn't even announced a release date for DLSS 5 yet, but an early version accidentally slipped into a build of NBA 2K27. The RenoDX modding community got their hands on it and quickly cooked up a toolset that lets anyone inject this neural rendering suite into almost any game. They've tested it on Control, Cyberpunk 2077, Skyrim, and even GTA: San Andreas, showcasing both the potential and the pitfalls of Nvidia's heavily AI-reliant post-processing.

Take Control, for example. When you toggle DLSS 5 on, protagonist Jesse Faden's face definitely gets more detailed—extra shadowing and skin texture that looks impressive at first glance. But here's the catch: she ends up looking like a completely different person. And as you move through the world, that inconsistency becomes glaring. Some environmental details look better, sure, but the overall effect is just... unnatural. It's like the AI is adding blemishes that don't belong, making everything feel disjointed.

Then there's GTA: San Andreas, which is a whole other level of weird. When Nvidia first showed off DLSS 5, they claimed it just enhances existing geometry, not fundamentally changes it. But seeing it applied to a PS2-era game? That claim completely falls apart. The modded version makes sweeping alterations to characters and environments that just look wrong. I'd bet money that no one thinks this is an improvement over the original classic.

Performance is another eye-opener. Modders managed to get DLSS 5 running on RTX 40 and 50 series cards, but the performance hit is massive. The AI models run locally and eat up GPU VRAM like crazy, sometimes halving your frame rate. Now, this is an early build not meant for public release, so it'll probably get optimized. But it does confirm some fears from the initial reveal, where the tech was running on multiple RTX 5090s just to function.

Meanwhile, Nvidia just released DLSS 4.5 at Gamescom, which brings next-gen Ray Reconstruction for better ray-tracing quality. DLSS 5 is still expected in 2026, but Nvidia hasn't said much since the backlash. They've stressed that developers will have full control over how much the filter alters a scene, but several devs have already spoken out against it.

So, what's the takeaway? DLSS 5 has potential, but this leak shows it's far from ready. It can make games look better in some ways, but it can also make them look utterly bizarre. Would you trust Nvidia's AI to remaster your favorite game, or would you rather keep things as they are? Let me know your thoughts!