This poem was written by AI

And now for something completely different.

As an experiment, I asked Chat GPT to rewrite my poem “Unapologetic.” Here is the original poem written by me:

Unapologetic

July thunder rumbles in the west 
     grumbling 
          and growling like hunger  
but not the kind a human body knows
 
no, this sound is 
     older 
          darker 
  deeper and more feral

a sudden crash splits the air

and then the wind
                 comes swirling
     unapologetic
                fearless
                   reckless 

a crackling flash of light 
          freeze frames
                    cedars, birch and maples 
             thrashing 
                       in wild commotion 

branches bend to rain 
   that batters 
                   intense and 
         unrelenting

so fierce 
         earth cannot 
   open to receive it

* * * 
postscript: 
I don’t know how 
to save this changing world 
(and clearly, 
I have no idea 
how to save myself) 
but in this moment, 
my faith in its endurance 
is all that seems to matter.

After a few questions, the AI suggested a climate fiction setting—“perhaps late 21st or early 22nd century Earth, where ecosystems are degraded, the weather is unstable and survival feels both deeply technological and deeply human. The speaker could be a caretaker of a restoration zone, or just someone trying to live meaningfully in a destabilized world.” Those are its words, not mine.

I agreed, and this is what it came up with:

Field Report: Storm Event // Sector 12A // July

Thunder rolls in from the west—
distorted,
stuttering,
caught in the interference bands
above the defunct turbine fields.

I log it:
Unnatural resonance. Event-class 3.
But language falters.
There’s no field code
for the way it feels—
not just sound
but a rupture.
Something feral
trying to speak through static.

Then the sky tears—
lightning flares
across the carbon-thin clouds
and freeze-frames the canopy:
old-growth reclamation zone,
limbs thrashing in composite wind,
trunks bowing under gust-storm stress
(7.4 on the flex scale).

Rain follows.
Hard.
Too hard.
Pulse-showers slam the brittle soil
designed to absorb slowly—
but the algorithms
still haven’t learned
that nature doesn’t negotiate.

And me?
I’m standing there in my stormskin
watching it all—
this programmed recovery
fall apart again.

I don’t know how to fix this world.
We were supposed to be better by now.
Smarter.
Greener.
But the flood maps keep changing.
The seeds don’t always sprout.

Still—
there are moments like this
when the system doesn’t matter.
The wind is wild.
The trees resist.
The rain insists on coming.

And I think:
maybe resilience isn’t a solution.
Maybe it’s a kind of prayer.

So I pause.
I bow to the forest that’s trying.
I whisper thanks
to the data I can’t control.

And I hope—
against all metrics—
that it’s enough.

---

So there you go. The Chat GPT climate-fiction rewrite of my original poem is not terrible. I have to admit I find it interesting and of course, now I’m tempted to try this experiment with other poems I’ve written . . . but I wont.

Like many artists and writers, I am very concerned about the use of AI to create visual art, literature, music, etc. As it is more widely used, I fear it will become more and relied upon and will degrade our own natural creative abilities. Sadly, we are now at a point where the use of AI has become so pervasive we can no longer be certain the images we see or the text we read was created by a human.

More importantly, I am also deeply concerned about the impact of AI on our earth and climate. AI exerts a huge demand for power which will drive up energy costs, further increase carbon emissions and require excess water usage to cool its massive data servers. AI also requires costly raw materials to fabricate GPUs that are obtained via dirty mining procedures and the use of toxic chemicals for processing. (MIT News)

I don’t plan on ever using AI to support the writing of my poetry.

And why would I? As challenging as it can be, the process of working hard on an original written piece and the satisfaction of finally coming up with something even partly decent is for me, what it’s all about. I wouldn’t want to change that.

Having said all that, the irony of my sharing this poem is not lost on me.

I’m sharing this particular poem because it feels like a message from the very future that AI is moving us towards. A dull, bleak, unimaginative future where climate change has continued to accelerate, life is impossibly hard, resources are scarce and, in the words of the poem, a future where even “resilience isn’t a solution, maybe its a kind of prayer.”

Image created by Chat GPT based on its own version of my poem