[ToValueFunfetti]

This is a result I find completely unbelievable. ChatGPT sucks at poetry. It struggles at anything other than ABAB rhymes and can't get rhythm right even at the level of syllable count per line. It also has a distinctive passive voice that I personally find unbearable. If people are saying it's indistinguishable from or better than human-written poetry, that's either poor judgment or poor human-written poetry.

[ratg13]

Hard disagree.

In my language, the poetry I've gotten LLMs to generate far surpasses the human generated slop sold in local bookstores.

I fully expect current 'poets' will start using this and the lines will be forever blurred.

[lukev]

Do you know anything about poetry, as an art form? Or are you judging purely on your (not only amateur, but complete outsider) aesthetics?

[diggan]

> Do you know anything about poetry, as an art form?

What kind of gatekeeping is this? Parent mentioned they're read poems from their local bookstores, does that mean they don't/do understand it "as an art form"? Does their opinion become more or less valid if they do understand it "as an art form"?

[lukev]

I'm not gatekeeping whether they are allowed to enjoy or talk about poetry.

I am ABSOLUTELY gatekeeping whether their opinion should hold weight when opining on the trajectory of a millenia-old art form.

[basisword]

It depends what you want from the poetry. If you want to read something that sounds nice and pretty or if you want something with deeper meaning and substance that requires you to think a bit more about what you're reading. I can see how ChatGPT could produce the former, but I doubt it can manage the latter.

[DevDesmond]

I think the magic is often in how you prompt. The best written art I've gotten from Claude was after a very extended dialogue; eventually, in the same context window, I prompted for an essay, framed by a short poem. The results were, to me, beautiful, and extraordinarily relevant in a cathartic way. Elements of my own personal "meaning and substance" ended up getting synthesized into what I would certainly consider poetry.

If you ask an LLM to "Write me a poem", expect the equivalent of what others are calling analogous to hotel art: generic and inoffensive. However, if you inject your personalized soul and suffering into the context window, there's no reason not to expect the transformation of that soul into indistinguishably human-like prose.

I won't share the full content, because it was personalized to me and my moment.

I am quite curious though, how art without an author will grow into society.