AI vs My Favorite Poet

Or W.B. Yeats, ChatGPT style

W.B. Yeats Collected Poetry

W.B. Yeats has been my favorite poet for many, many years. Since my brief stint at university and a wonderful English Lit class at The University of Sussex. For many days, ChatGPT has been an interesting and fun chatbot to play with - one of several new generative AI tools that I am using and learning about.

Yesterday I was reading a favorite newsletter / publication - Yaro on Ai, Web3, and its Global Impact - and I spotted a great section I had not noticed before and immediately loved: Prompt of the Day. Here’s what the prompt was that drew me in and inspired this post:

Yeats has been stirring my soul for decades, so what better way to honor (or maybe dishonor) that than letting a chatbot have a crack at imitating him? The two Yeats poems that have stuck with me the most over the years are these:

• “An Irish Airman foresees his Death” - a beautiful, short poem on young men (in his time) losing their lives in wars they have no lust for, no stake in.

• “The Second Coming” - a dark piece with apocalyptic tones written not long after the end of the First World War. Its first stanza is chilling and powerful:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

Yesterday I wanted to see how good, bad, or ugly a ChatGPT poem in the style of The Second Coming, would be - on a very hot, topical subject and one where ChatGPT has some skin in the game, so to speak. Here’s my prompt:

PROMPT: Please write about the potential benefits and the potential dangers of generative AI and write this in the style of the poet W.B. Yeats and his poem The Second Coming

That one came back with what I took as a little bit too much of a rainbows and unicorns result - including lines like these:

Generative AI, with its wondrous might, Unveils a tapestry, woven in light. It paints the canvas of our dreams anew, Creating visions once thought impossible, too.

The benefits, like stars in the vast expanse, Are myriad, waiting for us to advance. Through generative AI's skillful touch, We unleash creations that mean so much.

And a very optimistic final line:

So, let us proceed with caution and care, Harnessing the wonders, mindful and aware. For in this balance lies a world anew, Where generative AI can guide us through.

Well, that did not feel anywhere near chilling and dark enough. Here’s my second prompt to try to address that:

PROMPT : Please write about the potential benefits and the potential dangers of generative AI and write this in the style of the poet W.B. Yeats and his poem The Second Coming, with a dark, doomsday like feel to it

This returned a better effort, including these lines:

With uncanny prowess, it conjures novelty's reign, Breathing life into dreams, unknown terrain. In art and music, it wields an enchanting spell, Forging ethereal masterpieces, where dark shadows dwell.

But as the hourglass empties, despair takes hold, Generative AI's darker undercurrents unfold. Through its crafted illusions, truth is obscured, As falsehoods proliferate, sanity is ruptured.

And a much darker finish:

So beware the seductive allure, the siren's call, As generative AI beckons, entrapping us all. For within its promises, a caution must be found, Lest we surrender our humanity, unbound.

ChatGPT’s second try, based on my better prompt, was decent. Not terrible and certainly not great. I don’t think that’s surprising. The consensus I’ve seen in many articles about ChatGPT and other chatbots is that they are not perfect, far from it - and there’s no reason to expect them to be. Even leaving that aside, poetry is widely considered to be very difficult to translate. Much of the power of Dante’s Inferno may be lost in an English translation of it, and the same likely goes for reading Yeats in German.

In the end, Yeats needed fewer words and evoked far stronger feelings than the chatbot. I enjoyed going through this little exercise, but a volume of AI-generated poetry is not going to be on my bookshelves any time soon. My hope is that even as AI advances, poetry written by humans will still stand far above AI efforts.