Note too that the paper states "We generated five images for each test image and selected the generated images with highest PSMs [perceptual similarity metrics].", so it actually directly admits that the presented images are cherry-picked at least once in a way that IMO is blatantly cheating (why take the best of 5 and not 5 million? Then the pictures will look even closer to the ground truth!)

If the pictures they showcase at the top are among the best results they got, it means it's double-cherry picked. In that case it wouldn't surprise me if you could get similar results from random noise.