But is it poetry?
By John Welford
@indexer (4852)
Leicester, England
July 17, 2021 8:12am CST
Here is a poem that I wrote a few minutes ago:
Thank you for listening
Said the man on the stage
After everyone had fallen asleep
And he’d been talking for hours
About the history of the world
And the future of the nation
And this was the time he’d been waiting for
Because this is where he was going to say
What he’d been wanting to say all along
About his childhood and his faith
His wife and his kids and his house
And all he knew about God
And all anyone needed to know about everything
No matter what they thought they already knew
This is it he said
And waited for everyone to wake up.
There was no applause.
But there is something you should know - which is, that I didn't write it at all!
OK - I did write the first three lines off the top of my head, but these were then submitted to a program that uses AI (Artificial Intelligence) and all the other lines proceeded from that. I have not edited any of the text.
So, the question is, is this a poem? And - if it is - can I claim any credit for writing it?
Over to you! (And anything you say might be taken down and turned into another poem!)
5 people like this
6 responses
@indexer (4852)
• Leicester, England
17 Jul 21
That sounds like a claim for "conceptual poetry", along similar lines to "conceptual art"!
I have just input your text - you appear to have written a poem!
There are no fixed laws
That determine
What makes a text a poem
If you say this a poem
Then that is what it is
And if you say this is not a poem
Then that is what it is not
Here are the words
This is the page
These are the words.
2 people like this
@Vikingswest1 (6305)
• United States
17 Jul 21
If you say it's poetry, it's poetry.
If you claim authorship, it's plagiarism.
1 person likes this
@Vikingswest1 (6305)
• United States
17 Jul 21
@indexer
Did you author the poem?
Or did you make slight changes to text that was supplied to you?
A new product? No. A recycled copy of words that aren't yours.
It's unetchical, and you know it.
1 person likes this
@indexer (4852)
• Leicester, England
17 Jul 21
@Vikingswest1 I'm not so sure. What - to be blunt - renders any words as "mine"? They have all been used millions of times before, in just about any combination you could imagine. So what counts as "authoring"?
OK - I would agree that this method of composition is a form of cheating, but is that the same as being unethical? If it is a crime, it must surely count as being entirely victimless? For who suffers by it?
Where you have a point is in implying that I might be claiming to have created something that used material that did not come straight out of my own head, but - on the other hand - does that not apply to just about any creative enterprise? It all has to come from somewhere - and why not an AI engine that will never complain because it is a machine and not a human being?
Artists of all kinds, down through the ages, have taken material from others and re-fashioned it in new ways, so where do you draw the line on the degree of re-fashioning that is acceptable?
I don't think this is an open-and-shut matter - there are clearly powerful arguments on all sides of the question - which is why I raised it in the first place!
1 person likes this
@indexer (4852)
• Leicester, England
17 Jul 21
But who is being plagiarized? The text has been plucked out of thin air and will cease to exist as soon as the results page is cleared. As I have shown in this discussion, if you re-input exactly the same data you will get a completely different result.
OK - if I claim authorship I am not being entirely honest, but if I then edit the new text and mould it the way I want, am I then the author? What degree of editing will create a new product? I would suggest that this is not an easy question to answer!
2 people like this
@eileenleyva (27562)
• Philippines
1 Sep 21
It's an artificial poem.
Take credit for the first three lines but not the rest of the poem. Not yours at all.
By the way, you never did acknowledge that I solved your puzzle poem. Was it because I am not British as you claimed only Brits can solve your poem?
@indexer (4852)
• Leicester, England
2 Sep 21
It was simply the references to places in the UK that are not well-known anywhere else - such as Eye in Suffolk and Havant in Hampshire!
@cahaya1983 (11121)
• Malaysia
21 Jul 21
I found an article that was written about this matter from several years back. Interestingly, the issue is whether the copyright of such works should belong to the author of the AI program or the AI itself, but not the user who uses the program.
1 person likes this
@indexer (4852)
• Leicester, England
21 Jul 21
That's interesting. However, it would be impossible for anyone to exercise a copyright under such circumstances, because nobody could ever tell which words were generated by the AI and which by the human poet. The text generated by the AI can never be repeated unless it is copied, and only the poet would have copied it before deleting the original!
1 person likes this
@JESSY3236 (18923)
• United States
20 Jul 21
It's a poem, but no you can't take credit for it. It's a good poem though.
@innertalks (21026)
• Australia
20 Jul 21
That is very interesting, and ethics does play its part I think too.
When I was playing chess by correspondence, via the mail, we were told not to use a computer to help us to make our moves, but then we were allowed to access books, and to use strategies, and manoeuvres, obtained directly, from those books.
The game, itself though, was supposed to be creatively played by us alone.
Now, to me, the question is that this AI seems to be playing some of the game for us.
It is more than us using a dictionary, a grammar checker, a ryhmesauraus, etc. etc.
We are handing some of the creative input over to something else to produce for us.
Or, could we say, that we are just being inspired by this process, as when we get an idea for a short story, by reading something similar online, or in somebody else's book too.
1 person likes this
@indexer (4852)
• Leicester, England
20 Jul 21
I think it boils down to how you make use of the added input. I have found that the AI will throw words together in ways that I would not have thought of myself - but then so do people one might meet and talk to, or they might write in books, newspapers, etc. If you lift the lot wholesale - from whatever source it may have come - that is arguably plagiarism, but if you make judicious use of them and treat them in ways that make poetic sense within your original context, I don't see a problem.
As it happens, I find the plagiarism charge unwarranted in terms of AI, because the material it produces belongs to nobody and is completely transient - ask it the same question a moment later and it will give you a completely different answer. In the end, if you decide to cheat by lifting the text and calling it your own, the only person you are actually cheating is yourself. That is why I question whether this is an ethical matter at all - does ethics apply when the only person harmed is the perpetrator? That's one for the philosophers to work out!
I would also point out that lifting the AI text wholesale is a terrible idea, because it rarely hangs together as it stands. In short, AI poems are not good poems - they need plenty of human intervention before they can make that claim.
1 person likes this
@innertalks (21026)
• Australia
20 Jul 21
@indexer I think that I would agree with you, the use of AI, is just using another tool, to help one to write, and get ideas from.
Yes, ethics would not be involved when one is just using a tool, for oneself, which is just a bit more complex to use than a dictionary, or grammar checker is.
I guess, it provides more useful hints for a writer, than a monkey sitting at a typewriter could ever produce, though...lol...
