AI and the Poet: Beneath the Cool Metal Sheath

Will Rose and I just recorded a Words on a Wire episode about AI and the Poet, which is to say, the creative writer. We talked about how the large language models would change things for writers, especially since AI can write poems and stories and even novels based on particular prompts, in whatever style you can imagine.  

I could enter the prompt write a story about infinity and mirrors in the style of Borges. Almost without pause it will come up with one, and frankly, sometimes it’s pretty good.

I gave it the following prompt:

Write a short poem in the style of William Carlos Williams about the technological singularity and our struggle to keep up.

The first draft was too long and complicated so I added this:

Can you do it in the form of his poem The Red Wheelbarrow?

This is what it came up with:

So much depends

Upon

A silicon

chip

Glowing with coded

paths

Beneath the cool

metal sheath.

Not bad, I thought, but I played with it, as if i had written the first draft.

Here’s my edits:

You can go deeper

inside

A silicon

path

Glowing with coded

tigers

burning beneath

cool metal earth.

Like I tell my creative writing students once the language takes off forgot about the prompt or what it was supposed to be about. Just follow the language, or the images that came to you. I revised it without thinking of the meaning. Did the meaning change?

Or the more important question: To whom does the poem belong?

Williams Carlos Williams?

Chat GPT?

Or me?

I don’t want it.