The same RAW file was used, and the same editing operations were performed, including only noise reduction, chromatic aberration correction, vignetting correction, distortion correction, sharpening, intelligent lighting, and camera model-specific color rendering.
The JPEG files generated by PL9 are larger than those from PL8, but when comparing the enlarged images, PL9’s excessive sharpening leads to blurring. PL8 shows better detail after enlargement. Note that the noise reduction model used is xd2s, which, if I recall correctly, remained unchanged between versions 8 and 9.
I just checked… and they look identical. The output file from PL 9 was even slightly smaller.
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Can we see examples of this?
This statement makes no sense to me at all. Are your PL8 and PL9 export settings different?
Comparing the output of PL8 and PL9 with “No Correction” shows no difference that I can measure. When I engage xd2s in both apps (but no other corrections otherwise), some differences show:
Black means “no difference”, but when I crank up the tone curve, differences start to show when I compare the two files in Photoshop. This simply means that xd2s is different in PL8 and PL9.
DxO sometimes changes “things” silently but keeps the old names. Here, it’s with denoising…and possibly other features that I’m reluctant to hunt down.
My lesson learned: If something looks better or worse and I care about it, I need to dig deeper to see whether the differences actually exist, are based on hearsay or any other reproducible, real condition.
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Are your photos so bad that they require all these corrections?
Try simpler treatments.
You mean: no using of the lens profile and no denosing, because that is already too much?
The default for Lens Sharpness Optimization has changed in PL9 together with its value range. Default for LSO in PL9 is 100 which corresponds to PL8 0.0 setting. The default for PL8 is +1.0, which corresponds to about 133 value in PL9. This may be one of the reasons for the difference you see. See Lens Sharpness Optimization V2 question - #3 by Wlodek for the mapping.
Typically, I get slightly smaller jpegs in PL9 than in PL8. Didn’t look at it closer, since I don’t see any significant differences between PL8 and PL9 jpeg exports.
No samples, so speculating only. You may compare DQT and DHT tables in both jpg files and tell us your finding.
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I doubt the genuineness of the OP, given the errors in the post and the poster’s subsequent absence from the conversation. Happy to be proved wrong, but fake alarmist posts are a real thing these days.
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That was actually my very first idea. 
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What the PL8 version and the PL9 version?
Not only absence from this conversation, but absence from the other two topics they posted as well. On top of that, their “last seen” time is 7 hours ago, so it’s not like they just haven’t logged back in yet.
PL8 stands for “DxO PhotoLab 8”
PL9 stands for “DxO PhotoLab 9”
I tested with versions 8.12.0 and 9.4.0, both on macOS 14.8.3.