Can Artificial Intelligence Restore 85-Year-Old Popeye Cartoons?

A Slashdot reader shared an anonymous tip about “new consumer-grade artificial intelligence employed to restore 85 year-old Popeye cartoons, using only the available digital copies as sources for the remastering.”

It’s eerie to see vintage cartoons like Popeye the Sailor meets Sindbad the Sailor upgraded to high resolution. It’s apparently the work of Cartoon Renewal Studios, a group “Dedicated to the loving and careful preservation of classic off-copyright animation” (according to its web site).

There’s not much information, but Jim Ames of Cartoon Renewal Studios turned up in an online forum promising “we’re restoring ALL the classic cartoons to brilliant 1080 HD so they can be enjoyed forever.”

I’ve been dreaming of this project for some time… We will be posting THOUSANDS of off-copyright cartoons digitally remastered and upscaled to 1080 HD. We can process about 50 cartoons a month, at this time… Hoping to scale up to 100 cartoons a month processing capability next month.