A University of Pittsburgh study presented participants with poems by ten renowned English-language poets—including Chaucer, Shakespeare, Whitman, Dickinson, and Plath—alongside AI-generated poems in their style using ChatGPT 3.5. Interestingly, AI poems were rated higher in overall quality than the human-written ones, contrary to previous findings.
I am perplexed about how we can assess an AI-generated poem as inferior to a human’s. As when we read a poem, we read it for its content, irrespective of anything else. The emotional valence of Iqbal’s Shikwa has nothing to do with his circumstances; whether he were a general in the British army or a debauched drunk, the poem would still be there to be read, cherished, and savoured. Extending this logic, how can AI-written poems be rated lower simply because they were not written by a human? I don’t know.
Anyone who wants to explain their take on this.
Nice to see you back Furqan!
I believe that writing poetry (or anything else creative) requires the fundamental human capacity of imagination. It’s not just putting words together.
Also, I don’t think you can entirely separate a poet’s biography from his or her poetry. For example, Faiz sahab was a committed socialist and much of his poetry like “Aaj Bazaar Main” or “Hum Dekhenge” reflects this.
As far as I understand, LLMs just put words together based on what words statistically go together. I guess they also imitate the different types of writing they have been trained on. Thus, AI generated poetry is not a truly creative act.
Disclosure: I’ve experimented with getting AI (mostly ChatGPT) to write fiction. The results aren’t terrible but the ideas still have to be generated by a human being.
Writing is rewriting
Thank you! I respectfully disagree: if Hitler had written poems like Wordsworth, we could not gauge his poetics through his politics. Biographical readings don’t make much sense in poetry, at least. And as Zach just said, writing is rewriting – we imitate all the time. We learned language through imitation.
Read this essay by Shamsur Rehman Faruqi, where he tries to explain: how Faiz is not a political poet: https://franpritchett.com/00fwp/published/txt_srf_faiz_and_gzl.pdf
This is true – Hitler oddly enough was an artist
I don’t think one can reduce poetry to the poet’s biography but there is no denying that in many cases the poet’s biography can help to illuminate certain poems.
I don’t think one can reduce Faiz to a “political poet” but anyone reading “Aaj Baazar main” or even “Mujh se Pehli si Muhabbat” can see how his concern for the poor and the downtrodden is very clear. What about “Kuttay?”
“yeh galiyon kay awara bekaar kuttay…”
“We learned language through imitation”– I guess I’m just disputing the concept of an AI actually “learning”. Admittedly, I don’t really understand how LLMs work but I do think that they cannot be said to be creative in the way that human beings are creative.
Also, Faiz wrote some poems that actually are explicitly political like “Falestini bachay ki liyay lori” (Lullaby for a Palestinian Child).
Of course, these tend to be the nazms rather than the ghazals.
This is kind of a whole other topic which we can delve into at some point, but I do agree there is a fashion among a certain type of left-wing or liberal Pakistani of admiring Faiz for his politics more than for his poetry.
I’m loving this thread
Poetry needs passion
Absolutely.
And an AI cannot generate this passion. At best, it can “write” a poem based on human prompting.
I think it’s the engagement with AI .. hybridity does work
Agreed. But in that case, we could argue that the poem was still written by a human (with help from AI).
I don’t think AI can “write” poetry on its own. At least in the human sense of writing.
the AI has no need to imagine
Furqan:
Faiz was kind of a secular deity in our house growing up. My brother wrote a poem entitled “Faiz Ke Naam” which appeared in The Annual of Urdu Studies some years ago. You might also have seen it in “Transgressions”
https://minds.wisconsin.edu/bitstream/handle/1793/30578/13-Hasan%20Altaf.pdf
good on him – prolific family!
Yes, I have read this in the start of transgressions. I really liked it.
transgressions?
It is the book of Anjum Altaf. You may read my review: https://inkelab.substack.com/p/book-review-transgressions-not-translations
Ok thanks
In the spirit of an open thread:
“The Regal Pulao–A Brief History”
https://apinksamosa.substack.com/p/the-regal-pulao-a-brief-history
great piece.. is Pilau as common in India as Pakistan?
I feel Biryani is King in Indian cuisine but again just speculating..
a Pakistani restaurant opened in Cambridge; so meat-heavy
I would guess that pulao has Mughal roots.
In my family, we much prefer pulao to biryani. We only really eat biryani when someone sends it to us.
Pakistani cuisine does tend to be meat-heavy.
yes I remember eating a lot more pilau than biryani but then biryani in the last few years
“How BJP wins elections and no, it’s not only Hindutva”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpS_gEdGzk8
state capture?
“The rugged and tender charms of movie legend Dharmendra (1935-2025)”
https://scroll.in/reel/1088435/the-rugged-and-tender-charms-of-movie-legend-dharmendra-1935-2025
maybe worth an open thread?