Jason Allen's "Théâtre D'opéra Spatial," made with Midjourney, was reported to have won first place in the digitally manipulated photography category of the Colorado State Fair's fine arts competition, beating twenty other entrants for a $300 prize, and the result became an argument. Allen said he had worked through more than 900 generated images over 80 to 100 hours to arrive at it; thousands of comments online called the win unfair. It was the first widely known case of generative output entering an existing structure for judging art, and it put the questions of whether this counts as a tool, and who the author is, in front of a general audience. Allen later tried to register the copyright and was refused by the US Copyright Office.