I am having a lovely time giving ChatGPT 'literary challenges.' I had read an article in the Smithsonian Magazine that described an experiment in which the subjects of the that experiment were asked a variety questions, including some which required them to distinguish the real work of famous authors and the AI generated fakes. Most could not.

So off I went to Chat GPT to give it a few tasks that might test it's mettle. First up was the poet Philip Larkin. I had Larkin's 'Home is so Sad' in front of me and asked the bot to create a poem in the style of Larkin entitled Home is so Sad. Epic fail. The slightly sardonic tone and sense of regret was there, but the style was way off the mark.

Consider the bot's opening verse,

'Home is so sad,
It sways like a tree in the wind,
The rooms, once warm, now sag
Under the weight of what’s been.'

Its not bad as verse goes, but Larkin would never have written this. Not even when he was in primary school.

But other challenges have been far more successful and might well fool the unsuspecting. I asked ChatGPT to write scenes in the style of Shakespeare, Pinter and Beckett. Also a monologue in the style of Woody Allen. All were competently executed.

There are many potential downsides to this capacity, especially concerning plagiarism. But there are also wonderful opportunities to generate new bot-driven literature which could be a lot of fun. Back when I was teaching English and Drama, this could have been a very creative blessing for students, so long as they also did original student-driven work themselves. I mean the AI variety as a supplement and stimulus principally.

Of course, AI might yet destroy us all. But for now I have more tasks for ChatGPT. I hope that it gets to write better poetry though.