That time a retired programmer showed me how AI writes poetry

I was sorting mail in my truck on Elm Street last Tuesday and an older guy named Frank came up to chat. He said he used to code in the 80s and now plays with these new language models for fun. He showed me how he got an AI to write a sonnet about his dog losing a tennis ball, and the rhyming was actually decent. Has anyone else tried using these tools for creative stuff like poems or stories, or is it all just for work?

3 comments

3 Comments

morganhill28d ago

Buddy tried it. Sonnet about a stolen mailbox. Rhymed fine but made zero sense.

lucashart27d ago

And that's the thing people don't get. A sonnet isn't just "rhyme 14 lines and call it done." It's got a specific structure, a turn in the argument around line nine. If your buddy didn't have that shift, it's just a rhyming jumble no matter how many iambs he crammed in there. The stolen mailbox thing sounds like he got stuck on a weird image and tried to force a poem around it without any real point. AI does this all the time too, writes something that passes the surface test but has zero substance underneath. It's like a coat with no hanger inside, looks fine from across the room but falls flat as soon as you touch it.

phoenix_thompson424d ago

i saw this breakdown of how many sonnets Shakespeare wrote vs how many actually follow the strict volta at line 9, and it was like only about 60 percent do it perfectly. the rest kind of bend the rules or shift later. so im with you that structure matters, but i think people get too hung up on the "rules" part and forget the poem has to actually say something. your buddy's mailbox thing sounds like he focused so hard on the form he forgot to have a point. which is exactly like those AI poems where every line scans but nothing lands.