You are absolutely right. I believe this deep learning technique is a fancy way for mixing many many images automatically given a user's guidance.
For example, it's not hard to imagine future organic sculpting packages (e.g. ZBrush) having this type of tech integrated. Perhaps in-game character sculpting systems as well.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12581420
Appears to be fundamentally 2D, but the interpolation between orientations gives it a sort of meta 3D aspect.