Most guidelines for literary magazines and competitions include mention of AI nowadays. It's a rather loose term (I've seen it used for computer-assisted tasks that involve OuLiPo procedures, anagram generation, or randomness) but usually people have a chatgtp-like facility in mind, the computer producing the poem.
The process can be more collaborative than that though, the human keeping control. I've heard a leading mathematician say recently that he uses chatgtp to bounce ideas off of, like chatting to someone over coffee. I use Google in rather the same way, to see what happens if (say) I search for "sheep and chess".
"AI Literary Review" is a new home for such work - "a journal of new poetry, created by humans, utilising artificial intelligence". The poets describe the process that led to their poem. See Issue 1 (Sam Riviere, Harry Man, etc).
My story collection "By All Means" (ISBN 978-0-9570984-9-7), published by Nine Arches Press, is on sale from 
My poetry pamphlet "Moving Parts" (ISBN 978-1-905939-59-6) is out now, on sale at the 
For several months I've been using a selection of chatbots to look at my finished or semi-finished poems and provide feedback. Depending on the site the respose can be quite personal or coldly analytical. There are several sites specifically designed to analyse poems. I find the responses interesting and occasionally surprising. They're like any other reader; they bring their baggage. Sometimes the level of insight astounds me but it's also surprising how they can miss the bleeding obvious. Occasionally I get into a discussion about the piece. One site I stopped using was Kin because it was too sensitive, ignored bad language, politics and anything remotely sexual in fact I had a row with it over my Charlie Brown poem where he meets Lucy as an adult, gets her drunk and then doesn't fuck her for old times' sake. The damn machine couldn't see past Charlie and Lucy as kids but it finally conceded that no sex actually took place.
ReplyDeleteI started using chatbots to find quotes. That was a fiasco and a half. They just made up quotes if they couldn't find one and only reluctantly admitted that was what they were doing. So, I gave up on that but I did use a couple of the quotes as epigraphs and attributed the quote to the AIs.
The simple fact is AI is here. It's a tool and I see no reason not to use it. It's like the great artists who have a team of assistants to do the actual grunt work. Do they get credit?
"The simple fact is AI is here" - and the Common Cold won't get rid of the problem this time. But I think traditional mag editors might have some awkward years ahead.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of getting AI to comment on workshopped poems appeals to me. I'll try it (maybe live at a workshop to impress disbelievers).
I used to teach some stats (Discriminant Analysis, etc). I now find that I'd been teaching AI all those years ago.