RE: Wednesday Walk - The Tale of a Curious Calf and a Fungi Hunt

Hi @sofs-su

Firstly, thanks for the compliment on the pictures and the falling leaves. I'm guessing you listened to the YouTube performance.

Hmm AI can't write poetry as well as humans as yet as it is not fully sentient, but I dread the day.

I agree that I dread the day, but I don't personally think it will happen as quickly as some people think as AI is extremely effective at mining the internet for knowledge and putting together arguments/articles/commentary around a subject using purely logical intelligence, but it doesn't yet understand the nuance of creative intelligence... at least not IMO based on my research and experimentation.

I've actually researched and written extensively (in a few mainstream publications) about AI content creation limitations. Strangely enough, poetry is something that AI doesn't do well, especially if you're comparing what the AI produced to a professional human poets standard.

There are so few 'professional' poets in this world, and some would argue that it is an antiquated writing niche, but there are poets who make their living from being unique and skilled writers (although they very often have to supplement their income by teaching creative writing classes, or lecturing in universities). My favorite male poet - and current UK poet laureate - Simon Armitage is a good example of a modern day professional poet.

Anyway, to elaborate on my point, I was at a poetry night I read at last month (check out the YouTube recording of one of my headline sets at the bottom of this post if you're interested) and a fellow poet was making the argument that AI poetry writing algorithms could help poets produce more, and better, work 😂

So as I was performing near to the end of the set, I decided to do a little experiment, as I disagreed with him and wanted to prove his premise wrong. Not to belittle him, but out of genuine worry that some people might fail to develop their own unique writers' voice/style if they started using AI extensively to try and capture the essence of poetic expression.

I put into a poetry AI website the a prompt describing the premise of my poem, Dionisius Sojourn:

Dionisius Sojourn is a poem which employs various free-verse poetic techniques such as in-line rhymes, alliteration, assonance and experimentation with language that AI simply doesn't understand how to achieve well. It might sound a bit arrogant, but it's true. At this point AI poetry generators basically reference a massive catalogue of poetry they find on the internet and take random techniques, or styles, from the dataset trying to combine them with a loose narrative that fits the prompt you give them.

I put this prompt into an AI poetry generator website:

Write a poem about the goddess Dionisius visiting the island of Ibiza in modern day.

I'm not going to put the whole poem up here, but here is part of it to exemplify my point.

Dionysius, the ancient goddess of wine,
Descends upon the shores of Ibiza,
A modern isle where revelry doth shine,
Where spirits soar and inhibitions flee.

In vibrant hues, her presence does unfold,
Her flowing robes of purple and of gold,
She dances through the streets with wild abandon,
Her laughter echoing in every corner.

The sections I've put in bold and italics both show archaic language that has no place in contemporary poetry as it has evolved. It wasn't a terrible poem, it just lacked inventiveness, style and some of the more nuanced poetic techniques such as those I mentioned above (alliteration, assonance etc).

When it came to my set I started off by stating outright that AI in its current form couldn't replace human craft in writing poetry, at best it can create a template that perhaps could help writers suffering from creative block. I then read out my poem Dionisius Sojourn followed by a completely unedited version of what the AI generator had come up with. The second poem was greeted with laughter by an audience of people (as they usually are at poetry nights) who were either poets themselves, people who worked as writers in some capacity, or poetry enthusiasts.

Lol, sorry for the length of this comment, but it is something I do feel quite strongly about having completed a creative writing degree and subsequently built a career as a writer.

AI writing sites, as they are now, can create perfectly serviceable web copy... but I've yet to see any AI writing software that can recreate that spark of unique creativity that good fiction or poetry writers exhibit in their work.

It is an interesting subject for sure. And there are undoubtedly some people on hive trying to game the system with AI poetry writing websites, and also ChatGPT and other AI content generators. But IMO, these people are fighting a loosing battle, and that battle is the fight to further their own self-development and ability as a writer 😂

Thanks for your comment sofs-su, and for checking out my post 👍

P.s. here is my YouTube headline poetry set I mentioned. It isn't the one where I did the experiment with AI as I didn't have the equipment to film that one, but it's worth a watch if you like poetry performances.