This may not be the reason he's "losing" money here, but I was struck by how much less... impressive that piece is to me now compared to when I first saw it. (Visually impressive; I've always known it was from Midjourney.)
When the news first broke about it winning an award, I was like "well damn, I can see why—it's visually striking!" But the longer I look at it, and the more LLM-generated images I see in general, the less this one stands out to me. It's still pleasing, but seems less unique in both its strengths and flaws: the soft glowing lights, the tasteful muted palette, the random greebled details.
And it bothers me that the glowing orb/archway in the center has a distinct border around most of its circumference, but the part from 4 to 6 o'clock is fuzzier and blends into the nearby wall(?) :P
When the news first broke about it winning an award, I was like "well damn, I can see why—it's visually striking!" But the longer I look at it, and the more LLM-generated images I see in general, the less this one stands out to me. It's still pleasing, but seems less unique in both its strengths and flaws: the soft glowing lights, the tasteful muted palette, the random greebled details.
And it bothers me that the glowing orb/archway in the center has a distinct border around most of its circumference, but the part from 4 to 6 o'clock is fuzzier and blends into the nearby wall(?) :P