Whether upscaling is slop is based on the algorithm.

Asking chatgpt to improve the image is not upscaling but thats definitely what happend here.

There is a whole ass tire in the ai image that is not in the original… because if you know what a car looks like there should not be one there.

The same phenomenon happens with coloring old photos with ai.

What it should do is assign colours to pixels. But every time i see one posted its a colored recreation with details wrongly added.