Can AI Really Copy Artistic Style? I Gave It a Shot

Last night, I tried to copy someone’s artistic style using AI.

I wasn’t trying to copy them. I was just… curious.

Curious in that same way you look at a button that says “DONT PUSH” and you push it anyway.

Because, what would happen? Would it look like this artists work? Would it feel like theft? Would I hate myself? (Yes. Yes. Also yes.)

To the artist whose work I referenced: I used it because I love it. Because I respect it deeply. If this feels like overstepping, I’m sorry. This post wasn’t about taking anything. It was about grappling with what can be taken.

To my credit, I tried with my own work first. When the bot vomited out something that felt close to my soul I wondered if my soul was just lacking true artistic talent.

So I was like, “OK, AI, you may have figured out my tricks, but let’s see how you fare trying to mimic this style.

It felt like a confrontation. Good guy vs Bad guy.

Now, to be clear, I didn’t feed the model a hundred examples of said Artists work or anything.

I just uploaded one image. One. Just to see. And I asked the machine to make something “inspired” by it.

The result? It looked like their work. It felt like their work. Only it wasn’t.

It was like I’d made a wax replica of their soul.

I did ask the AI to incorporate some vampiric elements because, well, you know, we are stealing souls here.

Whose soul you ask? I won’t divulge.

If I just told you, we wouldn’t really be answering the question: Can AI Really Copy Artistic Style?

To answer that, we need someone to see and feel it. To shout, “Hey, I recognize that!”

Maybe that’s you.

Maybe you know.

Maybe it’s blatantly obvious, or maybe I just think that because I’m an accomplice to the act.

I definitely manipulated the colors a little. It felt too obvious otherwise.

But the lines, colors, tones, and subtle details they cultivate so intentionally were all there in the original. Regurgitated by an algorithm that doesn’t know what heartbreak feels like but knows how to recreate the way heartbreak looks on paper.

I tell myself it’s still not as good.

I mean, it’s not…, yet.

And that smashed face in the upper right corner, definitely AI.

But I still like it.

Liking it makes me feel sick.

And I kept generating.

Because I’m disgusting like that.

My relationship with AI isn’t healthy.

We have a love/hate thing going on even though I know it’s a god damn cheater.

I keep showing up for more.

I mean, it feels like AI isn’t even trying to pretend it wasn’t copying anymore. You give it an image, and it just knows what makes that image “that image“.

It knows how to duplicate, replicate, and regurgitate in much the same way a magician’s assistant knows the trick. Not because they believe in magic, but because they’ve seen the trick enough times to figure it out.

AI has been fed all the tricks through history.

It knows every style. It knows you.

But I thought we had an understanding. Unwritten, maybe a little naive. Style was something you earned.

Now I’m remembering my favorite quote from my post “How to find your Photography Style“?

“Style is something you can’t work towards, it’s something you see in hindsight.” — Gregory Heisler

You have to live it, work at it, bleed into it. You grow into your voice the same way people grow into their teeth.

Awkwardly.

Painfully.

Through a lot of blood and biting your own tongue.

And now? It’s just a prompt. A check box. A file upload away.

Do you want your art to look like this artist?

You can.

Do you want to rip off their years of risk and self discovery and just… wear it like a rented tux?

You can.

Do you want to do all that without ever feeling the weight of wondering if what you’re making even matters?

You absolutely can.

It doesn’t matter that the AI has never seen the light in their studio at 1am on cold December morning. The light that seeps from them while they are creating. The way it hits the edges of a paint smeared desk, spills onto the floor, and creeps out the door.

It doesn’t matter that the AI has never lost someone, or held on to grief until it calcified into something visible.

It just knows how to fake it.

That’s the part that haunts me.

Because now, a stranger could fake/copy her latest piece online and I honestly don’t know if I would catch the deception.

Some stranger, high on possibility and low on ethics, clicking “generate”.

Generate.

Generate.

Generate, like they’re flipping a slot machine that pays out in the ghosts of someone else’s memories.

Yes, we are using “her” now. You caught that. What a keen eye you have.

But we could just as easily be using “he“.

What does it matter?

Somewhere, someone who fancies themselves an art collector is pointing out my less than keen eye. “Well I can tell it’s AI,” they say, like somehow I’m the problem.

I don’t know.

Art used to be like a trail.

The breadcrumbs of someone’s becoming. Now it’s a costume. A mask you can wear for a few bucks a month. Put it on. Toss it off. Make 400 versions. Call yourself a visionary.

“Look,” they’ll say, “I made this inspired by her.”

No you didn’t.

You fed her into a machine and watched it spit out versions of her that even she might not be able to distinguish.

And the worst part?

If she were to upload her own work into the machine, and click generate a few dozen times, she could make more of herself than she ever could with her hands.

And maybe no one would care. Maybe no one would know the difference.

Maybe the line between “inspired by” and “imitation” is already gone.

Maybe we don’t even want to know the difference anymore.

I look at the AI generated version of her piece again. It’s beautiful in it’s own AI kind of way. And it makes me furious. Because I know what it didn’t take to make it.

It didn’t take self doubt. Or rejection. Or staring at a blank canvas while wondering if the version of you that used to be an artist is still in there somewhere.

It didn’t take risk.

It just took access.

And now everyone has it.

And now style, once sacred, once personal, is just… a prompt.

Another flavor of soda you can mix together with other flavors of soda until nothing tastes like anyone anymore.

We used to call that a “Graveyard” when I was a kid.

I close the tab. I delete the images.

But it’s too late.

The machine already knows how to be her.

And so does everyone else.

UPDATE: WHO IS SHE?

The artist known as herself knew right away.

In fact, within a couple of minutes of my post on X, she had identified herself.

Artists know their work because it comes from their soul.

Even when it’s been stripped down and reassembled by some soulless machine.

Others noticed too. Across platforms, different people called it out.

Not everyone though. Still had some starry eyes, “incredible”, “wonderful”, I don’t read anything comments.

Vee Hartland, who’s been sorta quiet in the NFT space lately, saw the blog post shared on Facebook and said:
“LF’s art I presume? It’s got the basic elements but is missing the essential feel of her art. But give it time, and I’m sure it will crack that.”

Aqueous on Warpcast identified LF as well.

And they were right.

It was Lisa Fogarty.

I never said her name. I didn’t have to. People felt it. That tells you everything you need to know.

Lisa’s work isn’t just style. It’s soul. It’s memories. It’s a lived experience that can’t be explained but is recognized instantly.

And the AI got close enough that people recognized the ghost of her in it.

But not without some mockery of course:

“Not even close.”
“Expectation vs reality.”
“They got nftlisa off Wish.”
“Looks like a copy of a copy of a copy.”
“Soulless and empty, like a lot of other AI pieces.”
“Fascinating. In a sense it’s a shame he wasn’t better at using Ai because that’s kind of where his experiment falls apart.”

But they missed the point.

This wasn’t some experiment on how close I can get to imitating Lisa’s work using AI.

It’s about how close anyone can get doing the bare minimum using AI.

Because that’s what someone does when they’d rather steal a voice than find their own.

And those critiques?

They only came After people know it’s an AI knockoff.

When it’s easy to say.

But this is already happening. Everywhere.

Quietly. Constantly. At scale.

To artists not named Lisa.

And Collectors are buying it.

Because even when the machine fails, it fails in someone’s shape.

That’s not flattery. That’s a warning.

If one image of Lisa could echo this much… what happens when it gets the whole library?

What happens when someone “better at using Ai” than me decides to build a career off someone else’s shadow?…

Because this post wasn’t about how close I could get to imitating LF.

It was about how dangerously close anyone with minimum effort already can.

Below you will find Lisa Original (Left) and the AI Original before I desaturated the colors.

What are your thoughts on this?

P.S You can find “All the things you did to be loved” and many other fabulous works by Lisa on OpenSea.

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