The judge was absolutely right to allow the defense to make sure no AI upscaling is used. It has nothing to do with Luddite views.

The judge didn't merely ask whether any such thing was used. He continuously pressed his own uninformed opinion over the evidence rather than trying to educate himself on the matter, especially given "expert" testimony

https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/12/22778801/kyle-rittenhous...

That's throwing his own incorrect mistrust of the technology into things. It wasn't based on precedent or founded by rational examples.

He also didn't provide alternate means for video playback that he would trust. It's reductionist.

At the very least, a competent prosecution should have then pulled up content in VLC and said "the source code for zooming is here and verifiable"

Interpolation algorithms (such as bicubic) used for zooming are not “AI” anymore than a decompression algorithm is. There’s no “training” involved; it’s an entirely “pure” algorithm. Same input in gets the exact same output out.

There was no AI upscaling. If you enlarge an image between two white pixels, the inserted pixel is white, you will not get an interpolated black pixel.

And in the opposite corner, we have valid concerns about the "just fill in the gaps" approach to photography getting shouted down by "have you missed the update? That was an actual leaf, not an iPhone dreaming!"

Dangerous precedent works both ways, I don't know which effect will be stronger.