Just how impactful is Midjourney’s v6 “stylize” parameter on a generated image?

I’ve been using the “stylize” parameter since v4, but recently discovered that I actually didn’t know how it works or what it really does.

I’ve always assumed that the “stylize” parameter increased or decreased the amount of “style” applied during image generation, and to some degree that is true, but how it does this is where we find the nuance.

From the official Midjourney documentation (found here):

The Midjourney Bot has been trained to produce images that favor artistic color, composition, and forms. The --stylize or --s parameter influences how strongly this training is applied. Low stylization values produce images that closely match the prompt but are less artistic. High stylization values create images that are very artistic but less connected to the prompt.

In a nutshell, the bot is trained to produce highly stylized images, but that comes at the cost of prompt consistency. A value of 1000 tells the bot to stick to how it was trained completely, and a value of 0 tells it to completely ignore the training data. Every value in-between causes the bot to stick more or less to how it was trained.

What I find intriguing is that the default “stylize” value is 100. That’s essentially saying “apply 10% of the stylization you’ve been trained to generate”. Why isn’t the default 500? Or even 1000? Why has Midjourney’s creators decided to fix the value at 100?