Future Sony PlayStation games will use AI to imagine new frames

Mark Cerny, the lead architect of the PlayStation 5 and PS5 Pro, told Digital Foundry that ML-based frame generation tech is coming to “PlayStation platforms” in the future, letting the game console use AI to imagine new frames between the ones it’s actually rendering, which can create smoother perceived image quality while (typically) introducing some amount of lag. At least, that’s how it works on PCs, where critics call them “fake frames.”

Cerny previously suggested the PS6 wouldn’t arrive before 2027 at the earliest, and that’s also true of this ML-based frame generation. “All I can say is that we have no more releases planned for this year. And that I look forward to discussing this more in the future,” he told Digital Foundry.

But if the PS6 is delayed, Sony might want to try to get more out of the existing PS5 Pro in the meanwhile.

This won’t be the first implementation of frame gen on console. The PS5 already offers AMD FSR3 frame generation in some games, but FSR3 doesn’t have the machine learning support. It’s interpolating between real frames, rather than AI imagining what should be between them.

Nvidia and AMD typically warn that frame generation isn’t a solve for low framerate, because you need a relatively stable framerate to begin with for the technique to work. I don’t typically use it on gaming handhelds, where I might only get 30 to 40fps to begin with on a title, and on my desktop where I can easily get 90fps on higher settings, I usually prefer leaving it off. There are some edge cases where I enjoy it, though.