Bots v Burns: Can artificial intelligence really write love poetry like Rabbie? Well, err, no

The robots are coming and are about to change the world and everything in it. Apparently.

A new generation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbots have been fascinating and alarming us.

Google announced last week it is launching Bard, a rival to advanced chatbot ChatGPT, developed by US company OpenAI, and the new technology is creating a buzz in schools, boardrooms and on social media.

These lightning fast bots can write novels like Dickens, paint pictures like Picasso and, basically, do everything we can do only faster.

But, as Valentine’s Day approaches, can they write love poetry like Rabbie Burns?

Well, we asked one leading AI writing programme, Writesonic, to try, and it did.

But Dr Pauline Mackay, author of Burns For Every Day Of The Year and co-director of Glasgow University’s Centre for Robert Burns Studies, said: “I’ve had a go at generating AI poems and this technology can – on the surface at least – turn out quite interesting material. This ‘Burns-inspired’ piece, however, strikes me as unsophisticated, even for such a programme.

“The phraseology, metre and rhyme is clunky, and the imagery rather obvious. It reads like a goulash of cliches.

“Burns was an astonishingly talented poet and songwriter. It is his command of language (both Scots and English), his imagination, his musicality and – this is important – his humanity, that have secured his status as one of the world’s most universally celebrated writers.”

Mackay added: “I’m enthusiastic about innovation and an advocate for using technology to research, curate and access Burns’s literature and legacy. That said, this AI-generated poem is missing those components that make Burns’s work so special. It is, quite simply, no substitute for the real deal.

“If technology like this encourages people to explore and experiment with language and literature, then so much the better – I’d encourage them to enjoy it. I don’t anticipate that it will generate the next great Burns forgery, however.”

Donald Smith, director of the Scottish Storytelling Centre and author of two books about Burns – Between Ourselves and God, The Poet And The Devil: Robert Burns And Religion, said: “This AI generated poem proves what is great about Burns, and also what original human creativity is all about.

“It is full of standard conventional lines, and lacks any throughflow. It is boring, static, repetitive and wouldn’t woo anyone apart maybe from a computer.

“Burns uses unexpected images such as ‘And I will luve you still, my dear, till all the seas gang dry…Till all the seas gang dry, my dear, and the rocks melt wi the sun….and I will love thee still, my dear, While the sands o life will run.’

“Those images draw on religious ideas of apocalpyse and the end of time, but might now be read as reflecting global warming. That is what happens when a profound poet like Burns gets going. He has perfect flow and ease, yet the images go deep and endure.

“Then note the Scots words – luve and gang and wi. Completely distinctive touches, deepening the emotion in real life ways. The AI ‘love’ poem is full of cardboard language, by contrast.

“Thanks for helping us see what makes Robert Burns so special – natural, engaging yet also original and profound at the same time. What a gift from Scotland to the world of poetry.”

Writer and poet Hugh MacMillan added: “Positives? It’s grammatical and superficially it passes for a poem. Negatives? Metrically it’s a bit of a disaster and chops and changes meter and rhyme.

“The repetition of ‘your hair it’, ‘your lips they’ doesn’t come across as fluid or melodic but staccato. Others are real mouthfuls as well as being plain dull.

“Some bits are nonsensical or even laughable –‘Your grace moves like the wind’. Essentially this is a simulacrum – an imitation of a poem with the two main components of poetry – musicality and emotional integrity, missing.

“Better AI programming may improve attempts at the former but until bots get crossed with humans, the core, the poet’s ‘voice’, will always be missing.

“In this case the missing voice belongs to one of the world’s greatest poets so its absence is even more obvious.”

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The Artificial Thing

 

My love is like a red, red rose

That’s blooming in the meadow fair

The prettiest flower of them all

With love so deep and so rare

 

Your beauty, it shines like a star

Your grace, it moves like the wind

Your smile, it lights up the night

And your eyes, they are so divine

 

Your hair, it falls like the dews of morn

Your lips, they taste of honey wine

Your love, it truly sets my heart aflame

Oh, how I wish you were mine

 

My love, there’s nothing I’d desire

Than to be with you each night and day

Your love is like a beautiful song

That I’d wish to sing, come what may.

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The Real Thing

 

O my Luve is like a red, red rose

That’s newly sprung in June;

O my Luve is like the melody

That’s sweetly played in tune.

 

So fair art thou, my bonnie lass,

So deep in luve am I;

And I will luve thee still, my dear,

Till a’ the seas gang dry.

 

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,

And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;

I will love thee still, my dear,

While the sands o’ life shall run.

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While AI might not be the next Scots poet, it is certainly becoming a bigger part of our lives.

Dr Mhairi Aitken, research fellow at The Alan Turing Institute, believes the idea of a super-intelligent computer battling humans for supremacy is the stuff of fiction, and has proven to be a distraction from the important conversations that should be taking place.

“It’s a familiar narrative because it’s the storyline of so many movies,” she said. “It feels so compelling and a lot of people really believe in that.

“I don’t see that as a realistic future and it has very little to do with the current AI we have, which is really just computer programs which do particular narrow tasks and nothing beyond them.

“Often these kinds of narratives and hypothetical far-fetched futures place the emphasis on what AI might achieve, rather than focussing on how organisations, governments and people are already using these technologies.

“There’s lots of discussion around potential ways forward for regulating AI and governance of it. It’s really important that that focuses on holding people and organisations accountable for how it’s used, not getting distracted by some idea that AI has capacities to make its own decisions on how it’s used for itself – quite simply, it doesn’t.”

While it’s no exaggeration to say that AI is significantly changing our society and having profound impacts on our lives, all of it is currently being being designed, developed and deployed by humans.

“It can be used for good or bad purposes and the effect that it has depends on the decisions of the organisations and people using the technology,” Aitken added.

“There are definitely risks, and it’ll have a big impact, but it’s not that vision of developing super-intelligence and taking over the world.”

Steph Wright, head of the Scottish AI Alliance – created to make Scotland a world leader in the development of the technology – is part of the team committed to engaging with the public across the country and spotlighting the work going on in the tech sector.

“People want to hear if it’s going to take their job or get rid of doctors and all that stuff,” she said. “The truth is that things aren’t so black and white.

“AI may take our jobs, but then there’ll be new jobs, like many of the jobs from 100 years ago don’t exist now. With each technical advancement the same conversations are being had.

“The pace of AI development is insane because of computer power and there are so many conversations to be had. It’s a fantastic technology that has the potential to do so much for so many but we need to make sure we’re careful about it.”

“We need to not underestimate it, at the same time we need to make sure that the people that developing it are held accountable, are responsible, and take all the ethical and societal potential impacts and considerations into account.”