A photo, image, or drawing goes through a custom script of different kinds of compression and scaling, multiple times, and a variation is chosen and tweaked, according to the author's preference.
"Lossy" comes from the fact that there's a lossy compression algorithm applied in the process.
It is not "AI" or "ML"-generated content.
It does use software technology and scripting to achieve the final result.
This is my way of mixing software engineering with graphical art and photography.
I hope you enjoy it.