A Writing Experiment – WRITING 101 – DAY 52

(for more information about the automaton in the picture check out Pierre Jaquet Droz Automatons)

Today we have a Petrarchan sonnet written in collaboration with the ChatGPT AI. The lines written by the AI are in italics, including the title. Here is how it describes itself: 

I am an artificial intelligence language model trained by OpenAI. I am designed to assist with a wide range of tasks, including answering questions and providing information on a variety of topics. I do not have feelings or personal experiences, and my responses are based on the information I have been trained on.

In general, I don't think using an AI to do my writing for me is a good idea. I was curious how a collaboration would turn out. You can use your judgement. I had a long conversation with it before I attempted the collaboration.

 

Love's Embrace

I feel like love is not the way

Perhaps its time to change your view

This feeling isn't something new

I say give love a try today

I would but I cannot stay

I too would stay, if only I knew

There is no know, there is only do

I'll give it a go, if I may

If we must, then let's try love

Let's embrace love, it's worth a try

I'll give in and go with the flow

I'll give in and rise above

Reach so high, rise up and fly

Grow so high, don't be brought low

In my opinion, it didn't turn out very good. I then told it to write it's own sonnet and it did much better. This gave me hope that we could write a good poem and maybe I hadn't done something right. I think the human link in interacting with the AI is still very important. So, I decided to give it another go, but change the way I gave it input. I think this version is better. The first poem I just showed it the last line and asked for the next line. On the second one I showed it the whole poem and asked for the next line. Just like with people, it did better when it understood the whole context. 

I chose to write its lines the same way it gave them to me. They could use a little tweaking, but that would ruin the experiment. I took the first thing it said, unless the rhyme scheme didn't match. In that case, I had it keep trying until it got it right. Otherwise, no edits. Without further ado, here is the next one, with a Title provided by AI.

Love's Hopeful Search

I feel like love is not the way

Perhaps it's time to change my point of view

This feeling isn't something new

But still, I can't help hoping that one day

I will see the grey beyond the blue

And find the love that's meant for me, anew

I search the world for a heart that's true

But all I find is heartbreak, it seems today

I sit in darkness and look for light

But maybe it's time to take a different route

To stand, to go, to seize my fate

And find the love that's meant for me, tonight

Let my caged heart fly and follow suit

And find the love that's meant for me, so great

So what do you think? I don't think regular poets are going to be out of a job, but it is an interesting tool to play around with. Hit me up in the comments with your opinions.