Policy regarding advanced aids (GPT, other AI, et al)

[rayheinrich]

Tiger brought this up in another thread and I wanted to continue the discussion in its own thread...

Even now it's difficult to tell if someone's using advanced aids (GPT, other AI, et al). Within a year
it will be impossible. While I think we should have a stated policy, it's my opinion that the best we
can do is to ask people to only post their own, original poetry written without the use of any aid
other than spell checkers, grammar checkers, rhyming dictionaries and thesauruses. The one
exception, I think, would be in Miscellaneous Poetry where writing created with more advanced
aids and even authored in entirety can be posted as long as it's clearly stated in the posting.

So... Should it be more or less or different and how do you think it should be specifically worded?

Also, it doesn't mention the use of AI for generating critiques. It seems like that, when the AI is
up to it, could be helpful. Obviously, it ought to be attributed.


Here's an example Of a poem not entirely created by AI but using it quite heavily as
an "aid ":

In a year the AI will get much better than this, but even now it's pretty easy to have
it make a poem for me. Here's an example of me screwing around with GPT4:

Ray: Write me a poem in the style of William Carlos Williams' earlier short Imagist poetry.
I would like it to be about a rainy day.

GPT: xxxx (writes it, then deletes it)

Ray: It wrote what appeared to be a reasonably good poem, but then it immediately
erased it and substituted a link to Wikipedia's article on William Carlos Williams.
Not sure why it did this, his works are out of copyright.

But whatever... so I tried:
Write me a poem in the style of Imagist poetry.
I would like it to be about a rainy day.

GPT:
Rainy Day

The rain drops
on the window pane
like clear beads
strung on a thread.

The sky is
a sheet of gray
wrapping the world
in a gloomy embrace.

The trees are
bare and wet
shivering in the wind
like lonely sentinels.

The rain drops
and drops
and drops
like a gentle sigh
breathing on the glass.

Ray: This is close to what I wanted, but there are lines that are a bit cliched and I wanted
you to replace these with some more original images. Here are the lines:

"The sky is a sheet of gray wrapping the world in a gloomy embrace."
"shivering in the wind like lonely sentinels"
"like a gentle sigh breathing on the glass"

GPT:
Rainy Day

The rain drops
on the window pane
like clear beads
strung on a thread.

The sky is
a patchwork of gray
sewing the world
with a somber stitch.

The trees are
bare and wet
dripping in the wind
like leaky faucets.

The rain drops
and drops
and drops
quietly whispering
to the glass.

Ray: This is much better but I think the metaphors in these lines should be simpler:
"sewing the world with a somber stitch"
"dripping in the wind like leaky faucets"

GPT:
Rainy Day

The rain drops
on the window pane
like clear beads
strung on a thread.

The sky is
a blanket of gray
covering the world
with a dull hue.

The trees are
bare and wet
swaying in the wind
like thin branches.

The rain drops
and drops
and drops
quietly whispering
to the glass.


Ray: This is much better, but I don't think trees sway like thin branches. Could the trees be
swaying like something else that makes more logical sense though I still want it to be a
simple analogy.

GPT:
Rainy Day

The rain drops
on the window pane
like clear beads
strung on a thread.

The sky is
a blanket of gray
covering the world
with a dull hue.

The trees are
bare and wet
bending in the wind
like flexible straws.

The rain drops
and drops
and drops
quietly whispering
to the glass.


("flexible straws"
Ray: I think the problem is that the trees should be doing something else. Maybe more static
and reflecting their appearance in keeping with the general mood of the poem.

GPT:
Rainy Day

The rain drops
on the window pane
like clear beads
strung on a thread.

The sky is
a blanket of gray
covering the world
with a dull hue.

The trees are
bare and wet
standing in the wind
like wooden poles.

The rain drops
and drops
and drops
quietly whispering
to the glass.

I still wasn't quite happy with the wooden poles but stopped and just changed those lines to:

The trees are
bare and wet
their dark branches
silhouettes on gray

But, with a bit of collaboration, it produced a decent poem. Though maybe that "whispering" kind of fudges Imagist a bit; but what the hell, I liked it. Definitely much more than a simple aid and representative of the many possibilities, short of total creation, that there are.

It can also change your poem's lines to iambic pentameter, or change it to a sonnet, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.