Borrowed from somewhere else, I thought all you Covers might have something to say about this:
"A team of researchers from Microsoft and Kyoto University developed a poet AI good enough to fool online judges, according to a paper published Thursday on the preprint site arXiv. It’s the latest step towards artificial intelligence that can create believable, human-passing language, and, man, it seems like a big one.
In order to generate something as esoteric as a poem, the AI was fed thousands of images paired with human-written descriptions and poems. This taught the algorithm associations between images and text. It also learned the patterns of imagery, rhymes, and other language that might make up a believable poem, as well as how certain colors or images relate to emotions and metaphors.
Once the AI was trained, it was then given an image and tasked with writing a poem that was not only relevant to the picture but also, you know, read like a poem instead of algorithmic nonsense.
And to be fair, some of the results were pretty nonsensical, even beyond the sorts of nonsense you’d find in a college literary magazine.
this realm of rain
grey sky and cloud
it’s quite and peaceful
safe allowed
And, arguably, worse:
I am a coal-truck
by a broken heart
I have no sound
the sound of my heart
I am not
or maybe this one:
the sun is shining
the wind moves
naked trees
you dance
And one more.
and now I am tired of my own
let me be the freshening blue
haunted through the sky bare and cold water
warm blue air shimmering
brightly never arrives
it seems to say
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence-bad-poems
It does get a little better:
you
...are
.........inscribed
..............in the
...............lines on the
......ceiling
.......you
are
...inscribed in
..........the depths
..of
..........the
...storm
The idea is not new, but the technologies and mediums are. In 2010, Duke University undergrad Zackary Scholl modified a program that used a context-free grammar system to spit out full-length, auto-generated poems. He then submitted the output to online poetry websites, in order to gauge reader reaction (in his words, it was “overwhelmingly positive.”)
One of his poems was actually accepted by the Duke literary journal, The Archive. This is it:
A home transformed by the lightning
the balanced alcoves smother
this insatiable earth of a planet, Earth.
They attacked it with mechanical horns
because they love you, love, in fire and wind.
You say, what is the time waiting for in its spring?
I tell you it is waiting for your branch that flows,
because you are a sweet-smelling diamond architecture
that does not know why it grows.
https://medium.com/@Yisela/computer-generated-poetry-will-knock-your-socks-off-763c815a1b52
Clearly, a computer can write a poem that some editors, at least, cannot distinguish from human poems and are willing to publish. What does that say about the future of poetry and art in general? I think the more pertinent question might be: Regardless of perceived quality, is a poem written by a computer a real poem?"
I think we’re far off from AI being sufficiently advanced to be considered on par with a human mind in terms of consciousness, but the day may very well come. At which time…I wouldn’t think it would be any less capable of playing with language and creating poetry.
Theres an episode of “The End of the World with Josh Clark” that covers AI which really outlines how far advanced AI could become. It’s scary. if the level of advancement described by the guests in that episode was ever reached, I think poetry may be the least of AI’s abilities.
Honestly, I like the principle behind AI interpreting the world through human linguistics because this presents itself as an opportunity for the growth of technology. Especially so when it becomes applied to cybernetic organisms in the distant future. This is a huge stepping stone for technological science for sure! So I have to say I'm impressed with the development.
Having said this, I do have to caution the use of AI-generated poems being submitted for publication. It's jarring to think that a poet doesn't have to put in any real work. Can we really call it poetry without the poet? Especially when the poet isn't the human and is the AI.
I see this as cheating, basically. At least on the literary publication front. The best way to handle this, I think, would be to create a separate submission category. A trained poet will clearly see the differences between an AI and a human writing a poem. From the poems I read above, there are inconsistencies that the human mind would notice during constructive editing before submission. Not to mention the language, in some instances, is a bit archaic sounding. For example, the poem submitted to Duke resonates with styles from the Modern school of poetry from around the 1950s. There certainly are poets who still enjoy writing in this way; however, I haven't seen this style published often. Post-Modern and Contemporary poetry seems to dominate these days if we exclude Instagram and Tumblr poetry. Cultural Movement poetry has been running lately.
The point is moot, really. No publication agency will tell the difference between a refined submission if the human poet is clever enough. I think it all will depend on a sense of morality in the end. I like using this research for furthering robotics and learning software. Still, I don't like the idea of using it to cut corners. I mean, imagine being able to purchase this AI software and simply placing images into its input to receive an entirely written poem. That would be ridiculous. Not to mention a colossal distortion of the human experience.
This brings me back to one of your YouTube videos where you did a book review of Rupi Kaur’s book and honestly it was the best video ever especially when you said the poems were statements, which I agree with. The term poetry is so broad now that saying “ the rain is wet, therefore I need an umbrella,“ to some people might be a poem! LOL
I believe a robot can write a poem and I’m all for it, but it will lack any real emotion. That’s why I prefer humans writing them. We write about our pain, our love, our longing. A robot doesn’t experience life unless it is getting a software upgrade. 🤣
Well that's given me a lot to think about. I guess I would still consider it poetry and I wouldn't be too disappointed if a robot wrote a really beautiful poem. Idk why a poetry robot is a thing or what the goal of one is but technically it would be poetry. This has given me an idea for a poem though😂😂