I am fascinated with what artificial intelligence can achieve. As you said, it's not yet at the point it can completely replace an artist (and I hope we will always have to rely on human sensitivity), but it could become a useful tool to help designers in the future. And the development of a new technology usually ends up with unforeseen applications we can't even begin to imagine.

Yeah the amazing this about AI is that it recognizes things like plants, rock, wood and other materials. Or use just a few pixels to construct a complete face (dwarf in the 2nd picture).

I redid some of the backgrounds with ESRGAN this time and with even better results, I think.

I used 4xFSDedither_Riven_Smooth.pth for the initial upscale, followed by a reduction in resolution by 50 percent using nearest neighbor downscaling, followed by another upscale using 8x_NMKD-Superscale_150000_G. Some screenshots looked a little oversharpened after this, so I blurred them a little.

https://u.cubeupload.com/33833/10btumblrnaczfdzIVT1s7e.jpg
https://u.cubeupload.com/33833/103tumblrnaczfdzIVT1s7e.jpg

https://u.cubeupload.com/33833/596725simonthesorcer.jpg
https://u.cubeupload.com/33833/61a596725simonthesorcer.jpg

https://u.cubeupload.com/33833/mazar12344d36c4f3972.jpg
https://u.cubeupload.com/33833/b1fmazar12344d36c4f3972.jpg

https://u.cubeupload.com/33833/1993617712.jpg
https://u.cubeupload.com/33833/19936177124xFSDedith.jpg

https://u.cubeupload.com/33833/mazar12344d36c50b66c.jpg
https://u.cubeupload.com/33833/a2emazar12344d36c50b66c.jpg

https://u.cubeupload.com/33833/mazar12344d36c521a3e.jpg
https://u.cubeupload.com/33833/c69mazar12344d36c521a3e.jpg

https://u.cubeupload.com/33833/screenshot20931.jpg
https://u.cubeupload.com/33833/screenshot209314xFSD.jpg

https://u.cubeupload.com/33833/tumblrnaczfdzIVT1s7e.jpg
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https://u.cubeupload.com/33833/f5dtumblrnaczfdzIVT1s7e.jpg
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https://u.cubeupload.com/33833/asd.jpg
https://u.cubeupload.com/33833/asd4xFSDeditherRiven.jpg

https://u.cubeupload.com/33833/19ctumblrnaczfdzIVT1s7e.jpg
https://u.cubeupload.com/33833/eb4tumblrnaczfdzIVT1s7e.jpg

https://u.cubeupload.com/33833/514tumblrnaczfdzIVT1s7e.jpg
https://u.cubeupload.com/33833/43etumblrnaczfdzIVT1s7e.jpg

Some of them look like oil paintings now and probably make for a nice desktop wallpaper or poster. Unfortunately I had to use screenshots which always have the characters or the mouse cursor in it. Pixel art characters don't tend to upscale that well with AI but if somebody gave me the background images in the original resolution I could do probably them all, since I don't know how to extract them from the game myself.

I don't think the first set of screenshots looked very good, but the second set of the backgrounds were impressive. The result was better than any other upscaling I have seen.
I wouldn't want to play the game with such graphics however. I love the pixel art of the original game and many others from the same time period. When you play such a game, you quickly adjust to the low resolution and use your intuition and imagination to fill out the missing detail.

Like others here I can see the usefulness of this technology when used by graphic designers. The artificial result from such a mix between human design and AI algorithms wouldn't be a problem since computer games are very artificial already.

But I really dislike when people use this technology for the upscaling of movies and images of real scenery. To me the result so far looks very ugly and artificial. Also, the better the technology becomes, the more it is going to make me skeptical of what I see, looking for flaws. It is going to be very unnerving. I already dislike what photoshop, and easy at hand filters have done for photography. And I really dislike what autotune has done to modern music.

I usually think of myself as more progressive than most, with an optimistic view towards human enhancement and biotechnology. But in this respect I am a hopeless reactionary.

Yeah, I don't think I would want to play it like that either. With all the generated detail it almost looks hyper realistic in some areas (like the skull) and too painterly in other areas. Because the AI algorithm can only guess so much what surface a particular selection of pixels is supposed to be, there's always going to be a clashing of art styles.

But as a reference or a basis to paint over it's a great tool. If you compare this to the Monkey Island Special Editions for example which I think were done really sloppy, AI upscaled backgrounds would provide a much better basis for remakes of that sort.