Very good article, it seems to me that the only people who worship AI art are the ones who know least about the way that artists themselves judge the value of art.
What they all lack is proper composition, the values of balance, depth and inspiration. Similarlty to photographic values is supreme. Anatomical veracity comes a poor second.
If you want to know more, I  have written a book on it. It is free to read online:
https://www.calameo.com/books/006503327ad682fc32541
John

The file doesn't exist on line, it's only on my hard disk so I can't show it as a URL, I can only share it with an email address, if you can show me how to  include it on this site I'll do it, I have no preference at all. I don't have any interest in keeping it private, it is just the only way I know of sending such a large file. None of these PDFs I have included can be accessed on line now.
best wishes
John

Probably not a viable proposition after all but I can still let anyone have any PDF for the subjects I mentioned. just let me know and I'll send you it.
John

I have tried all the Affinity apps apart from the Designer. The Photo is brilliant and will do far more than ever I will need but it is still in a class of its own.
I still find that Publisher is still a very steep climb, it's focus is completely different and seems designed to appeal to graphic designers who want brochures, advertising and publicity material. Not book publishing that PP does so well. 
With all its faults I still find PagePlus is so much more user friendly, so much so that I can use it for many uses that Publisher won't touch. These include easy cropping of a picture, dealing with the design of logos, removing background and bringing other apps into the program such as Photozoom to increase or decrease the resolution of a picture.
John

Don't forget to View/Tabs/ TOC tab  to find out which titles you are showing in the TOC.
John

I think I have found a complete solution to my problem. From a video expert on line I discovered a free open-source program that accepts MTS files with no problems.
It can be downloaded from: https://www.shotcut.org/. and it does everything that programs which you need to pay for.
I hope this can be helpful to other SONY Handycam owners with similar problems.
John

MoviePlus V6 Problems
I am having a lot of bother with MTS files, I have loads of them from videos I shot on my SONY video camera 1n the1990s.
Every time I load them into MoviePlus I am told that they are locked and I need to contact someone at Serif to unlock them before they can be accepted for editing into the program. And we all know how useless that is.
Can any wise person help me out in this please?
John

All you need to do is enter 881887 in the box and click on OK
John

Alfred, I take it from the remark you made about your quote that you didn't know the etymololy of your quote about "lackadaisical", tell me if I'm wrong.
John

I'm very much afraid that commercially speaking the AI method will mean a definite loss of income for many artists. There is no doubt that AI works quite well for purely illustrative purposes, many will lose their livelihood as a result. I'm inclined to equate the assurances about picture property rights from businesses with those that used to come from tobacco firms in the mid-1900s.
It also seems clear, more's the pity, that visual artists will not be able to enjoy the protection that music artists and musicians can expect from Spotify and other music streaming services to protect their interests.
John

As a professional artist I assume that the term modality refers to "the usual way of doing things" it doesn't refer to who is doing the usual things. If it's just the person feeding words into an AI it is not them, the AI program is the "doer".
Speaking as a "doer of the usual" I have the following observations upon the results I have seen of AI so-called art.
The best one could say of them is that they are photographically accurate assemblages of plagiarised portions of good painting assembled in a novel way. They all, without exception lack the following:
Good, imaginative graphic composition, altogether mostly lost nowadays due to the overwhelming preponderance of commercial illustration on the web.
The results are more representational of computer games or supernatural imagination common in comic style fiction.
True special and original professional compositional arrangement of shape and colour that has not been copied from many sources, often commercial.
The genuine style which is the mark of a time-served craftsman.
Any painter who has mastered his craft can detect the absence of any human feeling in most of these AI productions.
It is possible that if in the future a programmer with a proper craft education is able to include the human element into the AI program it may succeed in fooling an art practitioner of the old school.
What would militate against that is the completely wonderful feeling of actually experiencing the creative process with all its blind alleys and the actual thrill of the often long, often arduous and protracted process involved in the arriving at the final work of art. Other painters only fully appreciate and understand my paintings from seeing the preparative sketches I do towards it. Where are its equivalents with AI works?
Once I finish a painting, I tend to lose interest in it. The only further satisfaction I can obtain from it is to appreciate the journey it took and the enjoyment and possible impetus that other people might get from it.
That's all I have to say.
John