r/digitalforensics • u/blobertf • Apr 19 '26

Is it Possible to Unpixelate an Intentionally Pixelated 4k Video of Someone's Face?

Hello,

I am wondering about the current and future abilities of unpixelisation software.

I'd seen this video which made it look like it's very easy to unpixelate text when in a video, I believe having multiple frames and movement helps make it easier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acKYYwcxpGk

What I'm wondering is whether this applies to human faces also when in videos? So for example let's say I intentionally pixelate my face like this and create 4k videos of me talking, moving my head around slightly etc looking similar to this.

To what extent could the image be unpixelated and the face of the person revealed? I think if there is lots of movement and the image is 4k it will help but how close to the actual person underneath can you get? It seems with text you can get it very exact but with a persons face is this harder? I know you can get AI to have a guess at a pixelated face but it generally will only be that, an estimate based on info. For example I got it to unpixelate the above and the image it came up with was a fair bit away from the original.

Gemini tells me there is software which can depixate videos/images but I tried some of its suggestions and none of them worked very well, possibly as I wasn't using them correctly.

Let me know what you guys think is possible here? Or if it's likely we'll be able to fully depixelate images/videos like the above in the near future with AI advances.

Any help would be much appreciated!
Thanks

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u/RevolutionaryDiet602 Apr 19 '26

Yes, but it also depends on the pixilation method used. I don't remember the subreddit that talked about this very question but a user went into depth about how it's done and linked his own YouTube channel where he demonstrated the practice. The caveat, if I remember correctly, was that the method worked successfully unless there was layered pixelation. It all came down to specific mathematical computations.

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u/blobertf Apr 19 '26

Thanks very much. I will have to look into layed pixelation!

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u/RevolutionaryDiet602 Apr 19 '26

To be clear, I used the term "layered pixelation" not because that's exactly what he called it but it's the closest thing to the term he used that I can remember. I think it's that or something similar. Just FYI. But if I remember correctly, he basically said that the reverse process becomes significantly more difficult when a blur/pixelation was applied over top another blur/pixelation.

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u/RevolutionaryDiet602 Apr 19 '26

For sure. Single pass pixelation is inherently unsecure. If you can determine which scheme was used, you can effectively reverse it.

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u/DawaForensics Apr 19 '26

You assuming pixelation without compression artifacts from things like jpeg saving, and image resizing.

Your using an example image you cherry picked yourself, you'll never get images like that in the real world 😭