"Human-led process" really does sound like some marketing doublespeak bullshit. Like technically correct but doesn't answer the question.

No generative AI was used in the creation of the artwork. Every stage began with the authentic original James Pond graphic and was completed using traditional digital illustration, 3D rendering and manual artistic refinement.

Maybe I'm picking words apart here, but they very carefully didn't say gen-A.I. was not used at all. They only said it wasn't used to create the final product. So the described process is:

• original graphic
• vague middle stage
• finished off manually

I wouldn't be surprised if they did something like use A.I. to create the design, and then essentially traced over it.

I'm not sure whether that's actually better or not, but I'm inclined to believe them if they say that the final step was made by hand at least.