Waiting for AI “Gotcha!” Experiences
I know it’s coming. I’ve had a few uncomfortable experiences already.
What I’m waiting for is for someone post-publication to proudly inform me that I have been deceived into publishing AI poetry.
What will I say?
Well, there’s no denying that I liked the work. It’s a matter of subjective taste. Yes, it can be argued there are objective qualities that make for a quality poem. Regardless, I like what I like.
In truth, I have a feeling I’ve already published work in ONE ART partly written with AI; that is, poems in which the poet may have leaned a bit heavy on AI tools in the collaboration process. I would like to believe folks aren’t submitting work written entirely based on prompts with zero thinking involved. The thought of this is depressing. Still, again, if I published the work, I cannot deny having appreciated the final “product”.
What are your feelings on taste in the age of AI?
Any of us can be fooled. I'm interested to know how it feels to fool. What joy or sense of gratification is there in submitting an AI generated poem and having it accepted? Conversely, the letdown in having been accepted for a poem one didn't write? In a way, it's like a rejection, but for something one didn't submit.
Yeah, the writing would seem to be on the wall for us. Since GPT-4.5, at least, large models have been able to pass a standard Turing test: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2524472123. While I’m sure that experienced editors could do better than those psych-study volunteers—23% pass rate for *ELIZA*, which is decades-old technology—AI poems do seem to be getting through. I won’t name names, having better things to do with my time than fight a libel lawsuit, and I won’t describe my methods, so that people who submit to Variant won’t know how I look (and please note that I am not such a rube about this stuff as to take Pangram’s opinion as gospel); but when a friend mentioned to me that a poem in a highly selective journal (one of Duotrope’s 25 Most Challenging) struck him as being written by AI, I looked up two other pieces by the same poet, in less selective but good journals, and reached the conclusion that all three did seem much more likely than not to have been written primarily by AI.
It’s depressing, and I don’t know what to do about it. Laugh, I guess, when I ask Fable to imitate me and the resulting text sounds like John Milton with a head injury and is rated by Pangram as 100% human.