The PICO images do look more realistic at first glance, but when you zoom in, it turns out that PICO has changed all sorts of small details in the images.

For example, if you zoom in on the trees in the first image, PICO has moved branches around and invented new branches that didn't exist. It does so in a way that looks very realistic, but it is still altering reality. The JPEG failure mode is much different: it causes ringing artifacts that are obviously artificial, but it doesn't move a branch from location A to location B.