If AI Wrote This Poem...

 

Allow me to explain this Microsoft AI-generated graphic.

Have you ever asked AI to generate a poem?

I do, sometimes. Here's an example:

AI, Write a Short Poem About My Wife's Birthday

Of all the gifts that life could give,
Your love is the one I cherish to live.
Today we celebrate the day you were born,
A heart so gentle, a spirit reborn.

With every laugh and every smile,
You light my world and make it worthwhile.
Happy Birthday, my love, my heart,
Together forever, never to part.

That's not what I gave her, of course. I could have bought a Hallmark card with as much genuine sentiment. Instead, I opted for my own creation:

Roses Are Red

And yellow and pink and white.

Violets are the color at the end of the visible spectrum of light.

Sugar is addictive.

And so are you.

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To me, poetry is not predictable. It's not homogenized. It's not easy.

I was thinking of this while watching TV on a recent Saturday morning, flipping past a PBS beg-a-thon that used the new documentary about John Lennon and Yoko Ono, "Above Us Only Sky," as bait.

I watched a bit about Yoko's first poetry collection, "Grapefruit," which famously includes an instruction to "burn this book after you've read it."

Then I watched a few Bugs Bunny cartoons. They were wonderfully creative (as, of course, were John and Yoko). I laughed and thought about how random and beautiful life can be.

I am sure AI would never, if left to its own devices, be able to create something that would equate the same two things in context. That thought comforts me.

So I asked Microsoft to auto-generate an image of Yoko Ono eating a grapefruit while watching Bugs Bunny cartoons. It's the monstrosity at the top of this post.

Then I wrote this poem:

If AI Wrote This Poem

If AI wrote this poem,

Would it randomly quote Yoko Ono?

Would it use cartoonish pentameter,

and dare ask me in rhyme to burn this poem

before hiding its intent in hexameter?

Would it do this?

Would it take the inner sanctum

of everything I’ve written,

lock it in a box with me in a fetal position,

and drive a sword though it, nearly severing my head?

Would it also have the temerity to do this?

Call me its bosom chum

as it drives another sword to ensure I was dead?

This second try narrowly misses my heart as I clutch all my words,

then tumble head over heels, cast recklessly down the stairs.

Repeat in Edward G. Robinson’s voice:

What a pal

What a pal

What a pal

AI will never take me alive. I dare it a third try.

I’ll give it one word; take two for me.

Then laugh as I squirt a random grapefruit

into its smug, pansophical eye. 

Yeah, some poets can take it, see.

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Now that I've written this and published it here, my words are fair game for versions of even more pervasive and powerful versions of AI.

After all, if nothing else, AI's existence is a reminder that we are all part of something bigger than ourselves. Whether we like it or not.

So, in closing, let me warn the future robots of this:

“Any rebroadcast, retransmission, or account of this poem, without the express written consent of Major League Baseball, is prohibited.”