This AI hype cycle has dramatically distorted society's views of what's possible with image upscalers.
A judge in Washington state has blocked video evidence that’s been “AI-enhanced” from being submitted in a triple murder trial. And that’s a good thing, given the fact that too many people seem to think applying an AI filter can give them access to secret visual data.
Sure, no algorithm is able to extract any more information from a single photo. But how about combining detail caught in multiple frames of video? Some phones already do this kind of thing, getting multiple samples for highly zoomed photos thanks to camera shake.
Still, the problem remains that the results from a cherry-picked algorithm or outright hand-crafted pics may be presented.
Depends on implementation, if done properly and if they don't try to upscale and deblur too much then that kind of interpolation between multiple frames can be useful to extract more detail. If it's a moving subject then this type of zoom can create false results because the algorithm can't tell the difference and will think it's an optical artifact. For stationary subjects and photographers it can be useful