Stayin’ Alive – AI Experiment #1

This picture, seen before on this site, was actually shot on the date of April 4, 2005 at 5:49 PM US Central Standard Time in the city of Chicago, Illinois on a Fuji FinePix digital camera, ancient by modern 2025 standards, weighing in at a hefty 3.2 megapixels.

I titled it this way because I just felt an urban “Saturday Night Fever” vibe at the time. I was picturing the opening scene of that movie with John Travolta walking the streets of urban New York City conditions not much different than what we see here.

I had a phone in my pocket. It was a Nokia. This was before smartphones.

There are all sorts of sites that will do AI image upscaling for a small fee. But, with Linux and open source software available to all, I thought that there had to be a way to try this free of charge.

The result is here. A 3.2 megapixel image, upscaled using the hip and happening new “AI” now at a resolution of roughly 6K.

How was it done? A free application called Upscayl. It’s available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. In my case, I am using the Linux version.

Shoot photos, not each other!