The more I search the internet for great contemporary paintings and creative art the more I run into art that looks more and more like AI. More photographic.

You know what I mean. Work that is syrupy, sentimental, overly produced with high intensity color, tremendously detailed with mistakes in anatomical structure like fingers on hands, guitars with six strings. Faces with pores in the skin perfectly placed and as wonderful as they look, they look fake. Not paintings by a human hand. Sometimes the scenery doesn't match. The emotional content is missing.

AI produces images without subtlety or nuance. No feeling and warmth. And an ill informed public loves these. They don't understand that truth in painting does not look like this. In the real world most artists paintings are more subdued. More focused with areas of clarity and areas of softness. AI has no emotion. No ability to discern one from the other.

The parallel issue for me is actual artists, good artists, very talented artists are now painting more photographically accurate works. Duplicating an AI feel and look.

AI has no empathy for what it is assembling from hundreds or thousands of bits and pieces of art fed into its database. It does not have sensitivity and understanding to discover or invent; to know when it misreads something or interprets incorrectly the item or thing it is looking for. So it places something similar; anything close to the real thing. I am beginning to see more real artists now painting like this. And I am wondering why. The looseness and expression; the natural paint colors, the brush strokes , subtlety are missing in favor of this photographic style.

Quality art has softness where the artist indicates softness. Or blurs an area of unimportance. Focuses our eye. A quality artwork leads the eye through the scene with subtlety. AI sees everything with the same intensity, the same value variations. It can't discern what is important or where the focal point was intended. AI is a dead machine. It can't reason to understand ambiguity. It just searches for whatever it was programmed to look for. If it finds a close facsimile it will take it and use it. And uninformed viewers miss it or don't notice and accept it as correct. Or miss what was intended by a real "artist". AI cannot invent, it can only mimic; copy what it finds in its memory base. And many of today's artists are adopting this overproduced style. It is called photorealism.

When commenting online on images without an author, people ask me If I know the artists name? I go into a lengthy explanation informing them there was no Artist creating this.

Understandably they become more confused and ask how can a machine paint "this well"? The answer is AI is NOT painting anything. Even the programmer will not know what the AI will create. The current programs will give him three variations on the theme he typed in.

An AI image will not look like most other living artists work. And you will see no comparisons in technique, style, color or finish. AI will add an extreme 'polish'. It will be too bright, too tense.

Things are getting more confusing because art made by an artist created by the human hand is now becoming more commonplace. You see less of this subtly of color, less expression. Accurate anatomy, true, but less nuance both in brush handling, subject and in context. It a copy of multiple works. You will find this with portraiture and landscapes.

I cannot stress enough how much AI is hurting the industry and artists at large. Whenever you see an AI mage posted online, it comes from the machine and algorithms searching to find art somewhere online and " lifts" portions and re-configure it Artists will never know if their work was culled by AI.

The public must get more informed and stop supporting AI images by liking them. Real artists as well need to paint from life and not succumb to producing AI type works

There is another more insidious side to liking AI work. First off you can't buy any of it. It doesn't exist. You would purchase a copy or print. Secondly, when you like a fake scammers who are posting can get your information. They can track back. They know you are an easy target. You can be duped. So you go on a list, not for the painting you liked but for other items unrelated. Your spam emails might increase. They know you can be fooled. And the public can be so easily fooled these days. Misinformation, false narratives, political ads. Once they have you- from one like of a false artwork, you've been made. Why do you think they are doing it, to sell fake art? No!

The other issue equally important to art in general are "new, young" artists working strictly from photographs. Or reproducing photographs.

I know many artists use photos as an assist but not copied perfectly and presented as an original artwork. Artists will use photos when they can't get a sitter or someone in a group would not pose for such a long time. Or outdoors when the light is short and then sun moves all too quickly.

But the photo is only a starting point for a work not to be faithfully copied as is. It's interpreted. The artist sees it as a guide of the person or people he is painting.

As an example, when you see a painting of a street scene, those people didn't pose for the artist. Likewise, he isn't copying them. He uses them for attitude or position. Studying how people move and stand. There attitude.

I feel it's a lack of training when photos are used exclusively. Or a lack of knowledge in painting drawing methods. If you don't know what something looks like in a certain attitude, you use a photo to help figure it out. As an artist, you learn little and as a viewer you get someone else's idea. Not the author. Good artists train for a long time. They study anatomy, color, value, perspective and composition. When one copy's a photo, it is just the photo you are getting. Not the invention and expression of an artist. By extension you are not even getting Art. You are getting a copy of a photograph even if the artist tells you he/ she took the picture.

The internet has changed everything. Once, to see well produced art by an experienced skilled artist, you had to go to a gallery or a museum. You bought their book. Now you input their name on an iPhone or iPad and see their work. Albeit on a small screen so you don't get the privilege of seeing the true scope of the art close up. In life. You miss so much. The size, the true color, the brush handling, the thickness of the paint. In some cases with new art, the smell of the work. You don't experience standing, symbolically, in the same spot as when the artist panted it. You don't feel like you are apart of the painting experience. Don't take these things for granted. Those who regularly go to galleries and museums know what I am talking about. When you witness a work six or eight feet tall, you're moved. Not the same experience as on an IPhone.

In both cases, fake AI art or photo realistic it is not the same as real creativity. You are cheating yourself.

Put yourself in the artists shoes. You create a work of art and people see it on a small screen completely missing the point in your five feet high work. You feel they missed the whole experience and the scale. It is disappointing for both but especially for the artist. Someone who puts their heart and soul into making it only to be seen on an iPhone hurts. I can verify this.

So the next time you see an overhyped painting online beware and think before you press the ' like' button. The same with photorealism. It's just a copy of a copy. Not a real effort in creating a new work. I understand and appreciation the effort and time it took to copy a photo so well. But Art is not meant to be perfect. Art is invention. Art is expression. It is the signature of the artist. It is a look into the mind of an artist. Their expression of the world we live in. How they see it. And we connect with them. See something we didn't think. A view of life we would never imagine.

Many can identify an artist by the way the artist paints. Picasso, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, and so many others. Great history painting, Da Vinci's religious art. All created from an Artists mind and made real for our better understanding of life and the world we live in. Much of the world has been explained through art. Life was made clearer through Art. We must preserve this originality and invention. Artists are important and continue to show us truths we only imagine. AI is a lie. It steals. It makes false images.

Photography only mimics. Mostly shows us what is there to see.

Artists today need to rely less on technology; machine made art. No matter the temptation or monetary gain. We will lose our intrinsic humanity if we let machines make our art.

Artists must continue to use their personal creativity, imagination and invention to show us the possibilities still to come .