Mortal Kombat Art Book Gets Slammed for Hideous AI Upscaled Images

A few months ago, there was a reveal for a new MK art book with a short and succinct title – Mortal Kombat: Flawless Victory: A Visual History of the Iconic Series. The book from Ian Flynn promises exclusive interviews, in-depth look at the characters, fun behind-the-scenes facts, and of course, high quality artwork from throughout the series history.

It might have delivered on some of these points, but seemingly not the last one. The fan excitement quickly switched to outrage after people started spotting some outrageous examples of absolutely hideous upscales.

While this is egregiously bad, it's worth reminding that what you're seeing above is not the same as GenAI images. Upscaling algorithms like this have existed for a very long time, so these ugly upscales are not too dissimilar from what you mind find in any emulator when you ask it to smooth over the pixels. When you try to use these algorithms to upscale the image far beyond its original resolution, it's going to give a warped mess that does admittedly resemble the sort of hallucinations we can find on many AI generated images.

However, regardless of semantics, this is an incredibly appalling approach to celebrating and preserving the visual history of the franchise. It shows a complete lack of care, and since the initial finding, people started pointing out more and more issues with the book.

Most notably, it clearly avoids much of the older years of Mortal Kombat, mostly limiting it to old Midway photos and these terrible upscales. If you were looking for a Mortal Kombat art book that really dives into the visual history and identity of the series, this might not be the one for you.