Back in the day when they first had their sub model it was soooo much cheaper than it is now :(. Here's hoping some guy that writes super-resolution ML models on the side is a big fan of Gimp.
On a semi-serious note: would GIMP accept a merge request that depends on something like LibTorch[1] or the huge binary blobs like the ones produced by TFLite? I say this as a enthusiastic hobbyist in the ML space who is always looking for productive ways to procrastinate my grad research...
GIMP allows plugins for features that don't belong in the main application. I've found a lot of researchers had written GIMP plugins for their work, I am under the impression that that's how many of them are testing.
There are non-Adobe alternatives with ML super-resolution features that are much cheaper. For example, Pixelmator Photo can do it for $8 (iPad, no subscription). They have a Mac version as well but I don't use macOS so I can't judge that.