My favorite painter got ripped off on Instagram, and I’m grieving the end of an era

I found an AI painting on Instagram that looked like it practically stole the style of Hiroshida Yoshida, a woodblock artist.

(see photos)

I asked the Instagram account holder – “artist” – if he used Yoshida’s name in the prompt, but he apparently he didn’t. However, he stated that the program automatically referenced all the art pieces that he has saved on his account.

As a fan of Yoshida’s original works, I can’t help but feel sad that a random person is making money and calling himself an “artist” by simply typing a few keywords and letting a computer generate images from a bunch of paintings that took physical mastery, travel, and meticulous visual analysis to produce.

You might say “well, nothing is original” but….. Yoshida’s works took a literal adventure to make, as the artist crossed the ocean in a ship to capture the life he saw with his own eyes, and expressed it with his own interpretation of light, forging a masterpiece with hands that practiced for thousands of hours. The instagram “artist” just sat on a desk and punched a few keys for a few minutes.