Why people use AI to write 'poetry'

Note that in the title of this blog post I use the word people instead of Poets, and the word 'poetry' is in parentheses. That should tell you all you need to know about my personal stance on this issue. However, let's try to examine this question as dispassionately as we can. It's a question that repeatedly arises whenever AI (Artificial Intelligence) generated poetry is mentioned in my several poetry groups: why on Earth do some people use AI to write poetry?

Firstly, people who use AI to generate poetry seem to have no appreciation for good poetry. If they did, they certainly wouldn't put out the kind of facile, vacuous verse that AI algorithms generate. Any self respecting poet would hate to even be associated with it. AI poetry is emotionless, bland and predictable. Assumption 1 then, is that they either don't have a clue what good poetry looks like, or they are too stupid to realise what they are doing. 

Secondly, people who use AI to generate poetry realise they can simply write a prompt or two and then press a key, and the AI model will do the rest for them, churning out the rubbish it does. It's similar to feeding your dog, and then watching it dump out its excrement onto the ground a few hours later. It's the same kind of process. Assumption 2 then, is that these people are incredibly lazy, and don't wish to invest any of their time or energy trying to create their own poetry.

Thirdly, I have noticed over the last few years that the AI poetry frauds (because that my friends, is exactly what they are) can find a gullible audience who will like, love and share their drivel, feeding back to them a dopamine dose that fuels their fragile little egos. Some fraudsters have even gone on to sell entire books of AI generated poetry, under their own names. Assumption 3 then is that these people commit fraud deliberately so they can receive adulation and praise (and possibly even monetary reward) from ignorant saps who will suck up and swallow any putrid detritus served up to them. 

Finally, just to clarify a key point, I call AI poetry users fraudsters, because that is exactly what they are. AI algorithms work off the basis of trawling all  poetry stored anywhere on the web, and concoct 'poetry' from billions of lines of other people's hard work and creativity, just to satisfy the selfish desires of the fraudsters. 

So there you have it. You may or may not agree with me, but these are my analyses of what I know from a career spent studying the evolution of AI and my lifelong passion for poetry. I can't pull any punches on this, because it's a crime that is prevalent across all poetry communities, damages the reputation of poets everywhere and undermines what it means to be a creative human being. It's also theft and deception, and any self respecting poet should call it out publicly wherever they see it.

Steve Wheeler 

Image source with a Creative Commons licence