It's not so much that they down- and upscale the video of shorts, their algorithm changes the look of people. It warps skin and does a strange sort of sharpening that makes things look quite unreal and almost plastic.

It is a filter that evens the look with images generated by, say, grok or one of the other AI filters.

In a year people will think that "AI-look" is a normal video look, and stuff generated with it is what humans can look like. We will see crazed AI-fashion looks popping up.