Artificial Intelligence or Artful Insanity? AI poet pokes fun at island life

Monday 20 March 2023

---

Poetry can be inspired by many things.

For Wilfred Owen, it was the futility of the First World War. For William Wordsworth, it was the dramatic landscapes of the Lake District.

For a mysterious unknown poet, it was the Grouville Repair Café...

Pictured: The poem shared on the Grouville Repair Café page by Simon Langlois.

The mind-boggles when one considers the time and effort that must have gone in to craft such immaculate prose.

Not only is it an exquisite read, but it has perfectly represented the important work done by the Grouville Repair Café which encourages people to bring their broken items from home and sit with a specialist as they carry out the repair.

Therefore, it might surprise readers to learn that this poem was not brought into being by the blood sweat and tears of an intrepid poet, alone with nothing but his pen and his wits. In fact, it likely took less than 30 seconds to appear, and with the same effort as a quick Google search. 

This poem was written by the AI chat bot, ChatGPT. Developed in 2022, ChatGPT aims to learn and replicate human language structures.

It is completely free to use and has been been noted for its uncannily human responses, as well as it's ability to come across as distinctly un-robot-like.

Amused and inspired by its offering, the Express team decided to do what any good journalists would: see what else our robo-poet has to offer when it comes to island life.

Firstly, we started by asking it to write about Express...

Pictured: A poem about Bailiwick Express.

How flattering. 

So, we've done poetry, can ChatGPT go a step further?

Here is a joke we asked it to write about Guernsey...

Pictured: Udderly excellent joke? Maybe not...

Perhaps the comedy algorithm might need a little work... but you can't say it's not topical.

Ok, so back to poetry...this time, we turn to Jersey's parishes.

We're also not completely convinced this AI wordsmith has taken a good look around St. Helier...

It might be a little optimistic to say that the "sights and sounds" of St. Helier could leave a person "breathless" but, if nothing else, it could make quite a testimonial for Visit Jersey. 

Strangely enough, the AI had a field day describing the day-to-day activities of the residents of St. John...

Silliness aside, when prompted to write a Haiku about St. Ouen, it wrote...

I don't think there's much arguing with that. 

To find out what ChatGPT had to say about your Parish, you can look through the poems below - and comment below if you can guess which poets/styles we've asked it to emulate...