[ibrarmalik]

Can deconvolution create new data? I thought it was just a way to upscale images.

[klyrs]

If a blur filter uses a convolution, then it's invertible through a deconvolution.

[im3w1l-alt]

There will be some information loss from edge effects and quantization noise. But mostly invertible.

[klyrs]

You're not wrong but invertible filters, noise or no, are simply not anonymizing and should not be used for that purpose.

[leni536]

It can't, but blurring might remove less data than what you want.

[ivanbakel]

Deconvolution is any attempt to recover data that has been passed through some known transformation. It can "create new data" because it is effectively mathematically-educated guesswork.

In the case of upscaling an image, deconvolution involves looking for images which, when scaled down, resemble the original image being upscaled. That kind of pre-image approach can be applied to blur as well (if the blur process is deterministic).

[chestervonwinch]

I think you may be confusing deconvolution as the term is used in neural network literature with deconvolution as defined in mathematics/signal processing.