Research in Image/Video Gen AI models [D]

I've been going down a rabbit hole with image/video generation/editing models for a few months now, started with playing around with Stable Diffusion and ComfyUI, then got genuinely hooked on understanding why things work, not just that they do. I have an Engineering background but no formal ML research experience, and I'm trying to figure out how people actually navigate this space as a researcher or serious practitioner.