Pulling up a low-quality image and telling the computer to “enhance” the resolution has long been the stuff of TV fantasy. But, thanks to machine learning, we are actually getting much better at zooming into a photo without losing picture quality. This week, Google unveiled prototype software that does exactly this that it calls RAISR, or Rapid and Accurate Image Super-Resolution.

In essence, RAISR is similar to current methods of upsampling — the process of turning a small image into a larger one by inserting new pixels into it. But while traditional upsampling methods make these images bigger by filling in new pixel values using fixed rules, RAISR adapts its methods to the type of image its looking at. The software pays particular…

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