Here's how I imagine it went:-

1. See that AI upscaling works kinda well on certain illustrations.

2. Start a project to see if you can do the same with video.

3. Develop 15 different quality metrics, trying to capture what it means when "it looks a bit fake"

4. Project's results aren't very good, but it's embarrassing to admit failure.

5. Choose a metric which went up, declare victory, put it live in production.