Correct, but only if you assume that the processing is done on the server and not on the client. The grandparent comment isn’t saying that Youtube would be runn

Correct, but only if you assume that the processing is done on the server and not on the client. The grandparent comment isn’t saying that Youtube would be running AI upscalers on low-bitrate videos and then serve it to the user. They were saying that Youtube would just be ok with serving low-bitrate video content, if they know that almost all of their users rely on AI upscalers running by default in their web browser clients. The headline literally says “Firefox on Nvidia RTX GPUs”, i.e., it is referring to the AI processing on the client. Upon reading the article, I confirmed that it was indeed the case, so the question in the grandparent comment is valid. As for why, it is very simple - cost-cutting. Streaming high bitrate video is simply more expensive and complicated than low-bitrate video (both in terms of the actual bandwidth and the architecture/systems that handle it). P.S. this relies on the assumption that clientside AI upscalers for video would be able to produce amazing results consistently and would be compute-efficient enough to run on an average user’s personal device. We are not there yet at the current moment, but it is imo a very real possibility that we might get there in the not-so-distant future.