I full agree. I'm not trying to compare high quality naive source to AI upscale. That is a ludicrous comparison. Native will always be better.

But truth of the matter is that many times you don't have access to a higher quality source. Sometimes you only have something that's been re-encoded over and over or something that has degraded through the passage of time. I would not suggest overwriting the source, but the truth is that many people will find this a better viewing experience. Truth is that many of those remasters will use similar technologies, though with much more thought and care than your one click and it's done act like it is magic programs. Truth is that people do enjoy it in videogames and existing streaming and movie systems. People do prefer better native high resolution, but when that is just unavailable, what are you left with? But the truth is that most people are happy with lossy encodings and lower bit color schemes (most people don't even have a 10 bit monitor and (real) HDR isn't prolific).

If it is a choice between shitty quality and AI upscale, I'll choose AI upscale more times than not (but not 100%). But instead, if it is a choice between shitty quality, AI upscale, and high quality native, I'm choosing high quality naive 100% of the time. It's not even a question! But the point is that there are choices and not all of them require deep knowledge. I'm not arguing replace native with upscale, that's idiotic. But for an at home player where more people are going to have to make choices about storage spaces and won't care if it is lossy, then the option exists.

We're also talking about streaming services. Streaming services force the AI upscaling on you. Hell, even in some TV's it is hard or impossible to turn off (mine turns itself back on!). Let's let people decide, because we know that the incentives are too strong on the streaming service for them to hand you raw.