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Background: Charlie noticed this strange version of a well-known concept art piece by Ralph McQuarrie for Star Wars (1977) in the recent book about ILM (which, other than that, is apparently fantastic). So he wanted to know if it was a printing error. But it looks more like a botched upscaling job.

I don't see why anyone would ask an AI to make a McQuarrie drawing look bad, but anything is possible in this life. Well, I guess it is? Or some weird filters? And if that's the case, it's sad that this false, slop reality is even contaminating the new official books.

I suspect your initial comment was true: They only had a lowres version of the image. So they trusted the worshipful AI to upscale it to glossy magazine DPI.