As those of you who follow my blog will know, I have been experimenting with Google Bard. This morning I asked Bard whether AI poetry will replace human generated poetry and received a response which can be accessed here, https://g.co/bard/share/074f2caef001

The final few sentences of the AI generated essay sum up Bard’s response:

“Ultimately, the future of poetry will likely be a collaboration between humans and machines. Human poets will continue to bring their unique creativity and emotional insight to the craft, while AI will provide new tools and techniques to help them express their ideas. Together, humans and AI can create poetry that is even more beautiful and meaningful than anything that has been created before.”

Whilst I am sure that many humans will use AI tools with increasing frequency in their writing (including poetry), I am not convinced that this will lead to the composition of poetry even more beautiful than that hitherto created. As the AI response acknowledges, AI lacks human experience. Consequently, unless AI is able to fully comprehend human experience in the same manner as we humans do, it will never be able to surpass Shakespeare, Tennyson or any other of the poetic greats.

Furthermore, the appreciation of any art form is to some extent a matter of subjective judgement. To take a concrete example, I believe that Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night” is a wonderfully powerful poem, whilst a dear friend of mine (who is also a lover of poetry), is left cold by Thomas’s work. There will therefore no doubt be readers who will praise AI generated poetry and poems created in collaboration with AI tools, but others will be left cold by such creations.

The creation of mass produced pottery has not killed the craftsman who produces beautiful pots using his potter’s wheel. Nor, in my view will AI poetry destroy the poet who continues to write from the heart rather than utilising tools such as Google Bard or Open AI’s Chat GPT.

As always I would welcome your comments.