I think their suggestion was more "I have a photo of a cool horse, and now I would like a 3D model of that same horse."
Another way of looking at it, 3D artists often begin projects by taking reference images of their subject from multiple angles, then very manually turning that into a 3D model. That step could potentially be greatly sped up with an algorithm like this one. The artist could (hopefully) then focus on cleanup, rigging, etc, and have a quality asset in significantly less time.
The question is whether this actually "creates a 3d model based on the picture",
or if it "finds an existing model that looks similar to the picture and texture map it".
Another way of looking at it, 3D artists often begin projects by taking reference images of their subject from multiple angles, then very manually turning that into a 3D model. That step could potentially be greatly sped up with an algorithm like this one. The artist could (hopefully) then focus on cleanup, rigging, etc, and have a quality asset in significantly less time.