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AI Generated Sonnet

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Today, I asked Copilot to write a sonnet. My instruction was: Write a Shakespearean sonnet about the emotional horror of war. I timed it, and Copilot wrote the following sonnet in 9 seconds.

The drums of war do sound a dreadful call
That summons men to face their mortal foes
And bids them leave behind their loves and all
The joys of life that only peace bestows

They march with courage, but with trembling hearts
For who can tell what fate the field will bring?
They know that some will fall before it starts
And some will live to weep and never sing

The clash of steel, the roar of guns, the cries
Of wounded men do fill the air with woe
And blood doth stain the earth and cloud the skies
And death doth reap where only life should grow

O war, thou art a monster most unkind
That feeds upon the souls of humankind

This is much improved over the sonnet I asked Bing to write two months ago that didn't even have the required metre or rhymes. So yes, Artificial Intelligence is learning how to write poetry. But this is not an excellent sonnet as it's bland and trite. While it follows the metre and rhyme pattern, IMO foes/bestows/woe/grow are too similar, and archaic language is unnecessarily used and it doesn't have the signature volta to introduce a contrast. In short it is missing the human element, the poetic conceit.

I suppose I could've fed Copilot a more accurate command, but wouldn't it just be better to write my own sonnet? I can't see any value in AI writing except perhaps for notices announcing that the power company is increasing your monthly bill by 5% come March.

RE: AI Generated Sonnet

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I agree that this sonnet is flawed, but on the other hand you and I both know that we see worse than this every day on FS produced by human hand. I would venture that if this had been posted here it would have received a number of favorable views and may even have had one or two sixes (assuming it had been promoted high enough to get, say, 20 or more reviews.

Yes, AI is getting better at all sorts of things and no doubt it could learn to use a volta and eradicate archaic words and phrases. As for what it can be used for, not everyone can write a poem - shocking but true. For an occasion such as a colleague's farewell or a 21st birthday anyone could use this to whip up a rhythmical and rhyming piece that would be appropriate enough to use. Whether to tell the recipient that their tribute was machine-generated would be up to the person involved.

We had my 91-year old mother-in-law out for Sunday lunch last week and showed her how AI could work both to produce art (a cartoon picture of her black cat perched on a tractor) and a poem - a piece about how she and her cat spent their time, using both of their names and some other minor input. It spat out a sweetly rhyming piece in a few seconds. Not great literature, but good enough to make her smile and ask to have it printed so she could keep it.

Many benefits, but also many dangers in this newish technology and I am betting that there are already authors and poets out there using it to at least give themselves a head start in their writing.

As for me, I am currently using AI to produce great graphics for my poems that I am presenting on YouTube. It's fun, it's different, it may even attract new readers to my work...

RE: AI Generated Sonnet

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There are programs available to detect ai writing. I would hope Fanstory would have invested in this.