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Rickrolling in 4K is equally as amazing as it sounds

Rick Astley's 'Never Gonna Give You Up' is a mainstay among trolls and now a feat of AI interpolation.

In 1987 Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" was just a song – albeit, a popular song. Today, the same infectious tune from a young Canadian pop star has come to symbolize much, much more than a (now pretty corny) moment in musical history, especially if you've ever trolled, or have been trolled, by someone on the internet.

We're referring, of course, to the phenomenon Rickrolling.

"Rickrolling, alternatively Rick-rolling or Rickroll, is a prank and an Internet meme involving an unexpected appearance of the music video for the 1987 Rick Astley song "Never Gonna Give You Up". The meme is a type of bait and switch using a disguised hyperlink that leads to the music video."

Wikipedia

Given Astley's now inextricable role in internet Trolldom, it's only fair that, like countless other pieces of beloved media, "Never Gonna Give You Up" has gotten a truly modern update.

For the first time ever, you can now watch (or trick others into inadvertently watching) Astley's iconic music video in crystal 4K quality at a seamless 60 FPS.

Just look at the fidelity on this golden-red coif.

And original quality for comparison...

The enhanced version of Astley's 1987 music video was posted at the end of January onto YouTube by a user that goes by Revideo but didn't take off until this past week on Twitter.

According to an archived version of the newly interpolated video, Revideo used a professional video enhancement software called Topaz Video Enhance AI which claims to "enlarge and enhance your footage up to 8K resolution."

Not long after Revideo's enhanced version of "Never Gonna Give You Up" started to take off, the video was flagged for copyright, which prompted the an even more terrifying version to surface in its place.

Behold the reverse Rickroll (in 4K)...

The original version is also back up on Revideo's channel, albeit in a shorter, more copyright friendly, length of one minute. The entirety can still be seen and downloaded via the Internet Archive, however.

As is the case with many upscaled or interpolated videos, the term "re-mastered" here is a tricky thing, since technically speaking, re-mastering can only be done by altering the original version of a song, movie, etc...

Instead, Revideo's update to the Astley cannon uses AI to interpret and add information to a digital file with the help of machine learning.

Topaz Video Enhance AI, like other software of its ilk, uses a neural network trained on "thousands of video pairs" to reinterpret a video through sharpening, smoothing, resizing and eventually producing something that appears closer to frame rate you might expect from live sports or a soap opera.

Shutterstock

No matter what words you use to describe this precious and jarring piece of 4K programming, one thing is clear. Whether you love it or hate it, Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" will never give up on finding new ways to troll you.

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