Debate on the following edit, https://musicbrainz.org/edit/142468826, has brought to light the limitations of the style rule,

The cover art for a release must always exactly match the actual art for that specific release.

My initial interpretation was that the art on MB must be updated if the cover art is updated digitally in order to meet this rule, as digital releases can remain technically the same release even if the art is changed.

It appears that the way this is interpreted by auto-editors is that any retroactive change in cover art for the same digital release (such as if a label changes the cover art on a streaming service, or moves their main online store to a new one with new cover art), calls for a new release. Especially when keeping data conservation in mind.

This makes sense for physical releases, as changes to other metadata will be inherent with changing the cover art, ie. will need to be a new production run. It is a materially different release.

For digital releases, it seems like artists can change solely the cover art, whilst the same release date, catalog number, barcodes, ISRCs and all other metadata apply.

Aside from adding a silly amount of clutter (for instance, strictly speaking the above release would need 3 digital releases as noted), to add new releases every time the cover art has been changed would mean a lot of materially duplicate releases containing metadata that is otherwise normally unique.

I suggest that much like the relationship with a broken URL can be marked as ended, the cover art if updated should also have an option in some way or another to indicate old cover art.

I would note that this would somehow need to be restricted specifically to digital releases.