I got to talking with some folks today about AI chatbots, and I asked if they could write sonnets yet. The answer is yes, although I didn’t think the example I was given, was very good. Here was my response sonnet:
I do not trust machines that speak or write,
in Queen's English, of things they cannot know:
the fear of a forest fire at night,
or how a lover's cheeks begin to glow
when she recalls last night's sweet embraces,
or the chill of an ocean swim in Maine.
The machine-ode contains vague traces
of mortal insight, but no souls remain —
its rhymes seem vapid; comparisons, inept.
"But version 5.0 might be better!" crows the engineer, the software-adept...
as though baseball, with machine batter
and pitcher — Who, What, I Don't Know all gone,
would be some heaven, for one man, alone.
