Why Don't Artists Use Direct Email?

This is either a bad idea or a useful discovery, and I’m looking to find out which from the collective mind of the forum:

I’ve run across a lot of AI and business content that talks about scraping emails with AI and direct emailing potential clients. I also get emails like this, since I’ve had a website 10+ years. All the content I’ve seen around this is directed at the business world, but now I’m wondering… why don’t artists do this as well?

Most of the emails I get like this are horribly targeted and I don’t want them. But if someone sent me an email saying “hey, I made a cool piece of art you might like” (which happens to be an email magnet) I’d be far more inclined to check that out than a wall of text that starts “what if we came into your business, and…”

Anyway, my question is
1) Why don’t those in the arts use direct outreach?
2) Have you tried it and how did it go?

I notice that business advice for artists tends to be a few years behind the rest of the world. When I did my first film, filmmakers were being told “you should have a Facebook and Twitter page for your film” while the business world was talking about email lists. Now, everyone here knows they need an email list, but no one is talking about AI outreach. So now I’m wondering if this is another business lag or if there is another reason it wouldn’t work (like that those businesses are charging $3000 to clients, so their break-even point is different than $10 ebook sales).