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What AI Thinks an Emily Dickinson Poem Looks Like

Clive Thompson
Debugger
Published in
9 min readMar 18, 2022

How would an AI illustrate a famous poem?

In my Linkfest earlier this week, I wrote about the new crop of AI “generative” models, in which you provide a few words and see it translated it into an image.

Often, these AIs create pictures that are fascinatingly alien. You get images composed with a strange blend of literalness and hallucination. The AIs try earnestly to depict what you described, but they filter it through an inhumanly vectorized form of machine perception that has no clue how the world actually works.

This is why I agree with what Alberto Romero argued, which is that generative AIs are powerful new tools for art, possibly on par with the impact of the camera back in the 19th century. Artists are learning how to use AI in art — a new type of paintbrush, on a new type of canvas.

It got me thinking:

Hmmm, what could I use a generative AI to do?

Well, one of my favorite genres is poetry, and one of my favorite poets is Emily…

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Debugger
Debugger

Published in Debugger

Debugger is a former publication from Medium about consumer technology and gadgets. Currently inactive and not taking submissions.

Clive Thompson
Clive Thompson

Written by Clive Thompson

I write 2X a week on tech, science, culture — and how those collide. Writer at NYT mag/Wired; author, “Coders”. @clive@saturation.social clive@clivethompson.net

Responses (28)

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This could be a great idea for high school English teachers working to get students personally connected to poetry.

77

Great article!
As an artist who is inspired by words and a wordsmith who evokes images, I found your experiment with AI gratifying.
Our main strength as humans is our ability to creatively abstract and extract nuance from supposed reality. The worst…

100

Fun experiment. Now that you know how the AI responds literally to metaphor, any plans to take something more direct like Frost's "Stopping by Woods..."? If I can sort out how to do it, I would input the first line of Cien Anos de Soledad.

24