[4RealFreedom]

The first thing I looked for was text and saw they used cars in an example. I thought the same thing as you 'this can actually get readable license plates?' I don't know enough about ML to understand the associated paper, though.

[MetaWhirledPeas]

One thing that might explain it is this logic thread: a) this is a car, b) this is where a car's license plate would normally be, and c) license plates usually have numbers like this.

Upon close inspection the plate's digits look realistic, but there are some symbols that look unfamiliar to me. But I don't know what country the footage is from, so I don't know real from unreal when it comes to symbols.

If the car's badge turned out to correctly match the car model, that might be a bit of a red flag. Although it's not out of the question that a model could eventually recognize car models and get badges right. It just seems unlikely that I'd see such an advancement in a video before I ever saw it in a still image.