Can AI actually write poetry?

Algorithms try to crack the art of poetry

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Will machine learning ever be able to recreate the creative impulse?

Trying to speculate how advanced AI will become can be quite the rabbit hole, but in the meantime there’s a poetry-writing AI having a good go.

The project, entitled ‘Poem Portraits’, lets you ‘donate’ a word of your choice to an poetry-writing algorithm, trained on over 20 million words of 19th century poetry. You chosen word is then “instantly incorporated into an original two line poem” written on the fly by the algorithm.

For those of you who like sharing photos of yourself, you can also snap a selfie to share alongside the poem, which appears to make use ofGoogle’sDeep Dreamimage processing software (or something similar) for a trippy text overlay on your face.

You can see our own attempt at some AI poetry below. It’s not quite Wordsworth, but the fact that the lines still come across as ‘poetic’ and vaguely grammatically correct is still an achievement – and points ahead to a future where machines understand the syntax of creative writing as well as we do.

The project was created by UK artist and stage designerEs Devlin, in collaboration with Google Arts and Culture (it’s their website you’re visiting) and ‘creative technologist’Ross Goodwin.

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Henry is a freelance technology journalist, and former News & Features Editor for TechRadar, where he specialized in home entertainment gadgets such as TVs, projectors, soundbars, and smart speakers. Other bylines include Edge, T3, iMore, GamesRadar, NBC News, Healthline, and The Times.

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