Cyberax AI Playbook
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Model · Stability AI · Image-Enhance

Stable Diffusion x4 Upscaler

Stability AI's diffusion-based 4× upscaler. Trades speed for quality — invents plausible high-frequency detail rather than just sharpening, which suits AI-generated images especially well.

Modality
Image-Enhance
License
CreativeML Open RAIL++-M (Open weights)
Released
December 7, 2022
Last verified
May 10, 2026
Runs locally
Yes

Strengths

  • Diffusion-based — generates plausible high-frequency detail
  • Pairs naturally with Stable Diffusion image-gen pipelines
  • Open-weights, runs in ComfyUI / Automatic1111 with one node

Weaknesses

  • Slower than GAN/transformer upscalers — minutes per image on consumer GPUs
  • Can hallucinate detail that wasn't in the original — wrong choice for archival or evidentiary work

Try it

WhereTypeNotes
Hugging Face weights RAIL++ license
ComfyUI local Native upscaler nodes
Replicate hosted API key required

Change log

  • — Initial entry.