ChatGPT - Verse 2

 

Ara Güler photo

I heard a report on NPR where artists were protesting because ChatGPT user would ask it to create a drawing or graphic in the style of whatever artist they might choose and ChatGPT would create it with eerie likeness.  People could get for free what the artist was selling on a particular graphic art site.  Does this application of AI necessitate a reconsideration of the copyright laws or does it essentially make them null and void. 

This gave me an idea.  Why not ask ChatGPT to write a poem in my style?  I did just that, “Write a poem in the style of Mark Gavoor.”  It came back saying I had not given it enough info confirming my status in the Pantheon of poets.  I revised my query, “Compose a poem in the style of mdg-poetry.blogspot.com.”  This time it generated a poem in a few seconds.

 

In the still of the night,
When all is calm and bright,
I sit and ponder in thought,
Of all the lessons I've been taught.

 

Of love and loss, of pain and gain,
Of laughter, tears, and joys untold,
Of moments fleeting, like drops of rain,
And memories that never grow old.

 

I muse upon the roads I've walked,
And all the paths that I have strayed,
Of moments where my heart was shocked,
And others where it felt conveyed.

 

And yet, amidst the twists and turns,
That life has taken me through,
I know that with each rising morn,
A brighter future will ensue.

 

So I raise my head to the sky,
And whisper a prayer for tomorrow,
For the strength to keep climbing high,
And the grace to weather all sorrow.

 

For I know that with each passing day,
I'll find the courage to be strong,
And though life may lead me astray,
I'll find my way where I belong.

 

The themes were a bit similar.  The poem rhymed where mine are all in free verse.  ChatGPT’s poem was about twice as long as mine.  I felt like it failed.

I wrote a rebuttal if you will and posted both on mdg-poetry.blogspot.com.

 

My Response:

Well... I rarely rhyme so often

Methinks (actually i overthink way too much)

I am less (of course I am less)

Hallmarkish than this

 

And I have enough of that

Whatyacallit... oh yeah

Ego which tells me I am so

Flipping creative

That now I believe

I am toallly AI-ly

Unpatternably

Unpredictable

 

Head Space

February 8, 2023

 

I was feeling somewhat smug that I had one-upped ChatGPT.  Good for me.  Good for mankind. 

This morning I got a text from a friend, Meltem, who used to live here but moved back to Turkey, the country of her birth.  I played in a Turkish music she put together.  In the text, she provided this verse in Turkish and added “influential poetry, expressive, and says it all”:

 

Aşk ve kayıp, acı ve kazanç,

Kahkahalar, gözyaşları ve anlatılmamış sevinçler,

Yağmur damlaları gibi akıp giden anların,

Ve asla eskimeyen anılar.

 

It put it through Google translate and didn’t recognize it, but .  I ask her if she wrote it.  Her response was “No, you did.”  At that point I realized it was the second verse of the ChatGPT poem:

 

Of love and loss, of pain and gain,
Of laughter, tears, and joys untold,
Of moments fleeting, like drops of rain,
And memories that never grow old.

 

Meltem went on to say it ought to be the lyrics of a Turkish art song in the Rast maqam.  I had to agree, though I was favoring the maqam of Uşşak.

And just like that, all smugness evaporated.