It seems to me that this artist is just proving even more that we're art the stage where AI-generated art generally can't be distinguished from real-world art. This artist submitted a very thought-provoking work (still having a hard time thinking of that picture as a bird myself), and that's what won them the contest. It could just as easily have been generated.
We went from "the judges couldn't tell it was AI generated" to "the judges couldn't tell it was real". What a world we live in