Sony is bringing AI-powered upscaling to the standard PS5, giving owners a way to improve game visuals without stepping up to the more expensive PS5 Pro.

The company has announced Quick Spectral Super Resolution (QSSR), a new AI upscaling technology designed specifically for the base PS5. Marvel’s Wolverine and Ghost of Yotei are the first games to support the feature, with patches rolling out today.

AI upscaling has previously been one of the major advantages of the PS5 Pro. Sony’s more powerful console uses PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR), which relies on dedicated machine-learning hardware to reconstruct images at higher resolutions and improve detail.

That hardware isn’t available in the standard PS5, which made bringing PSSR directly to the older console impractical. Instead, Sony has developed QSSR around a smaller and more efficient neural network that can operate within the base PS5’s hardware limitations.

The technology was developed through Project Amethyst, Sony’s ongoing collaboration with AMD focused on machine learning and graphics technology.

QSSR won’t deliver the same results as PSSR. It runs more slowly and is expected to target output closer to 1440p rather than the near-4K presentation that PSSR can achieve on PS5 Pro. However, Sony says it can still deliver sharper detail and greater image stability than the conventional temporal upscaling techniques commonly used on PS5.

Early comparison footage appears to demonstrate some of those improvements. Marvel’s Wolverine shows more clearly defined details on buildings, while grass and foliage look sharper in Ghost of Yotei. Some softness remains, reflecting the compromises needed to run the technology on the standard PS5.

Importantly, developers may not need to do much additional work to support it. Sony principal graphics R&D engineer Daniel Craig says QSSR can be added to games already designed around PSSR with only a few days of tuning.

That could help the technology spread relatively quickly. Sony says QSSR will be made broadly available across PlayStation Studios, opening the door for more first-party games to adopt AI-powered upscaling in the future.

While QSSR won’t turn the standard PS5 into a PS5 Pro, it gives owners of the original console access to one of the Pro model’s most notable graphics technologies without requiring a hardware upgrade.