The judge was arguing about enlarging an already recorded video, not about the merits of the original recording. This post is about image processing during the capture process.
Conflating them is disingenuous, unless we're taking very large leaps of logic
Apple could make iPhones work like DSLRs and save both the edited image and the RAW sensor capture.
One is the playback of data, the other is the capture of real world signals into data. They may use technologies in the same domains, but the implementation varies dramatically, as do the possibilities..
If you have the recorded data, you can send it to any trusted playback device/software to get back a trusted scaling. You can workaround/bypass any distrust in a given players algorithms, and it's very easily discoverable whether something is applying processing or not. There's still the risk of intentionally faked videos, but the discussion is around real time processing introducing artifacts.
With image capture though, there's no such thing as "truth". Even RAW data isn't truth. It's just less processing, but you can't escape it altogether. Even professional full frame cameras will do significant signal processing between the photosites and the recorded RAW image. The same goes for film.
The only thing a court can do is put a strong guidelines for proving the honesty of the content. you can't disallow processed imagery because all images are processed the second they're recorded.
Even the company who makes the software couldn't explain what was done to the picture when their "expert" was asked during the trial. There is a wide range of different methods that can be used to get more details out of a blurry pictures, including ML/AI-based algorithms that are indirectly getting extra details from other pictures.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/12/22778801/kyle-rittenhous...
If the judge mistrusted the enlargement method, he should have ordered them to display it on another device or software.
Real-time video upscaling is very standard filtering that's not introducing extra hallucinated details. At most, some TVs use ML to tune their sharpening and color rendition, but it can always be disabled. The iPad has never been shown or proven to use those for video playback, and even if it did, the courts should have a standard video player to present details with standard filtering.
The judges non-technical stance on things, isn't borne out of reality and again, any capture time post processing should be completely independently viewed from playback time processing.