Hello, recently I have checked a bit on AI and saw what it could do for me as a blogger and poet.
The most well-known AI tool is Chat GPT which you can sign up at: https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/ However, I found https://writesonic.com/chat and managed to convince it to write a “poem” for me on the subject of the darkness of winter.
The winter nights are so dark and cold
An endless chill that never grows old
The days are short, the nights are long
The darkness lingers like a mournful song
The snowflakes fall like tears from the sky
Grieving for what’s been left behind
The winter shadows creep through the trees
Engulfing all in its cold embrace
The wind whistles a sorrowful melody
Reminding us of what once was free
The frozen lake reflects a misty moon
Dimming the stars and their tune
The darkness of winter is so melancholic
But there is beauty in it’s sorrowful hues
It’s a reminder of the endless cycle of life
And of the new life that will come in time.
You can also ask the AI to create a picture for you. I asked the chatbot to: paint me a picture on the subject of “depressing winter”, and got one.
Personally, I think it did better on the picture than on the poem. The poem, though perhaps OK from a technical point of view, is not very original and is overloaded with cliches, but maybe with a lot of editing, it can grow into something decent.
Another tool totally dedicated to poetry is one created by Google, which is more like a collaboration with famous poets. You can find it here: https://sites.research.google/versebyverse/
I did a very quick couplet
So today I would like you to see what you may do with any AI tool to write your own poem. Please indicate in your response what tools you have been using (including any artwork) and how you worked your own voice into the poem.
When you are done, please post it to your blog, linking back to dVerse.Then put the link directly to your poem at Mr. Linky below.
Leave a message in the chat below and If there is any other tool you may wish to share please share, and do not forget the usual process of reading and commenting on other poets’ work.
And lastly, do you think we will be replaced by AI, or do you think we will use it as a tool when we write (just as we have learned to use other online tools such as rhyme dictionaries, online thesaurus, etc.).
dVerse 
Hello all… I can promise you that when it comes to drinks tonight there is no artificial sweetener… I hope you are all fine this Thursday in February.
Good evening dVerse Poets at the bar today. Thank you for a fun prompt, Bjorn.
Warm chocolate please as its -5C here. Thanks for hosting Bjorn.
Chocolate with lots of sugar coming up.
Yummy. Thanks!
Hi Bjorn. Well this prompt blows my mind. Soon in the near future, where will we all be with the AI managing our lives and commenting on our social mediums. I was not happy with the poem output from Chatgpt for now, so that gave me cold comfort that it is still not so good, as of now. But who knows, what the future will be.
Grace, I echo your thoughts on it.
I agree… the poems coming out of the chatbots are not very poetic… the rhymes and meter may be there but the result needs a lot of editing.
But if one is really lazy, viola! here is the poem in a minute. Like cooking instant noodles.
And the artwork too 🙂
Loved the prompt, Bjorn! I ll have a tall glass of orange juice please 😀 Happy Thursday! ❤️❤️
Sweet sweet orange juice coming up.
Hello Bjorn and All. I had a blast with what I will call experimental poetry. One tall mug of hot rooibos tea with a shot of Baileys please. It’s icy and bone-chillingly cold here today.
Your drink is coming up… and I had a lot of fun as well.
Thanks much, Bjorn. Cheers!
The question answers itself for me. If I don’t write the poem, then I don’t sign it. If a computer writes it then sign it — mister computer. This whole computer writing poetry or creating art is something that interests me not. The journey and struggle to write the poem is what provides me the challenge and joy. Without that, who cares. I’ll see everybody Monday… 🙂✌🏼🫶🏼
I think it is a scary world… but right now you don’t need to be scared of what the computer may give.
Rob, I learned the other day that one of these AIs has written a bunch of books and has its own store at amazon. To me that is very troubling. I agree, it is in the writing and where that writing comes from that is what makes its creation soul worthy. I see the AI stuff as soulless!
Rob, what I worry about and feel sorry for with the advent of AI is the world of academia. Used to be, teachers had to worry about plagiarism from copying out of a book or a magazine; then came Google and it stepped up the game of tracking down plagiarism. Now you have entire papers and essays written by AI totally, or even partially. So very sad.
I don’t believe things will get better Lil. You think we got stupid out there right now, just wait. We are all passengers on Wall-E’s Axiom, consuming Huxley’s SOMA. I fear for my grandson, and his children.
“And lastly, do you think we will be replaced by AI, or do you think we will use it as a tool when we write”: A bunch of robots sitting around, reading poems produced by chat bots.
I wonder too…
Well I hope the robots don’t show up at our OLN LIVE sessions!
I hope to at some point. When the small children aren’t distracting me.
Would LOVE to have you come, Melissa!
For some fun I also tried the Vogon Poetry Generator
Your generated Vogon Poem
Read at your own peril!
See, see the flumpy sky
Marvel at its big marshmallow depths.
Tell me, Alan do you
Wonder why the shell-shocked ignores you?
Why its foobly stare
makes you feel a glob of pus.
I can tell you, it is
Worried by your plobacious facial growth
That looks like
A bolocious.
What’s more, it knows
Your a rats head potting shed
Smells of decomposing corpses.
Everything under the big flumpy sky
Asks why, why do you even bother?
You only charm lizard.
This was a fun challenge and I’m glad AI did not compose too well – I had to edit quite a bit with split lines etc to disable that robotic stiltedness
Getting cooler again here for a while so hot chocolate and a dash of rum please
A perfect drink for a cold night, and I had fun too…
It’s simply plagiarism — and a sad state of affairs for the creative human mind and spirit. ✌🏼🫶🏼
If we decide to accept what AI does it is, but if it is used as another tool among many it may come to be something useful (even for poets)… today it may write software code… but nothing more. Most of the posts today have used only a few lines from AI…
OK — To not just be dismissive — I went with the challenge of today’s prompt Björn. I had the WriteSonic AI write a poem about how a kiss feels. Then I followed that with a poem about how, in my fleshy form, I think a kiss feels. 🤔 hmmm. 😉✌🏼
I know that you did better… but maybe there is a line or two you may pick up… don’t know. I preferred the others where I have more control and can edit the poem exactly like I want it to be.
Rob, imagine the highschool teachers now having to think about plagiarism in an entirely new way. One thing I will say, when the computers first came out, think Apple II E (our first computer in our home) and it had Spell Check. As a former English teacher, I thought that would absolutely ruin the writing skills of students! And then, low and behold, folks found out the Spell Check left there when it should have been their, left we’re when it should have been were, etc. This AI to me, is not helpful at all in terms of poetry unless, as far as I could see in my experiment with it (read mine), one writes to write in an avantgarde way!
See you Monday! 🙂
Good to know that AI is not that good yet. But I assume that we will get back to exams with only paper and pen…
amen
You asked us choose an AI tool
but this is what I learned at school:
Artificial Insemination
serves the cows without flirtation.
Here is my poem; I have to leave..
Bully for AI, what to conceive?
Please make mine a milk stout, Bjorn, with no Added Ingredients.
Milk Stout coming up, and still the cows get very little flirtation… maybe the same will happen to us, when all communication is done by AI
thank you Bjorn!
I rue the day when there’s no twinkle in the eye,
of the bull, of cthe cow, of the passer-by.
LOL! You added some humor to the chat here today!
😉
There are too many lovers of the art form out there, so i do not think The AI would replace poets
much🤍love
Nope… no way, the question is more if poets, writers and others may get help from AI… to some extent I think we already do… our search-engines do contain some level of AI already.
Well this was a weird prompt, Bjorn. But I must say, once I started, it consumed me. I doubt I used “verse by verse” in the correct way….but it did provide some interesting lines in the “style of Amy Lowell”. Had to choose her as my mother used to live in a subsidized housing building called The Amy Lowell Building!
It’s chilly here for San Diego – mid-50s. I’d love something warm please!
There is no correct way… you are free to use it in the way you want to… I added quite a lot of my own writing to it.
The future is here, all the things we saw on movies like The Terminator and I, Robot might actually come true! It’s a scary thought. Thanks for the awesome prompt, BR :))
I think unless we try it a bit it will consume us before it’s done. For other professions, it is already here… so poets need to be even more imaginative.
I used the random word generator…I don’t need a computer to write the poem. Suggesting words is enough for me. For people who use computers for everything–well they will use AI. But I still like to use my hands for both art and writing. (K)
I am less good at using my hands… it’s all computer in my writing.
What a coincidence. I just signed up for ChatGPT earlier in the day, but I had not interacted with it … until now.
Ha… just a coincidence… and nice to see that the bots do way worse than we do as poets.
I don’t know how many of us know this, I just found out today. Our friend and fellow poet Glenn Butkus passed away last Friday the 17th. I will miss his bold ways. Rest in peace Glenn.🕊
Thank you Rob. So sad to read this message. He has always been there for us from the start.
It was sad to hear, and we will sure to remember him at the bar. I feared something like this since his absence has been way longer than any time before.
hi all
i was out live poeming at an open mic on Thursday so missed this interesting prompt. not sure if AI will ever match a real life poet.
i am sad to here of Glen Butkus passing. thank you Rob for passing that along.
rog