Earlier this week, Google launched its AI poem generator, PoemPortraits, and you bet people all over the internet are tossing everything they can at it. How it works? It’s really simple. The generator asks you to input, or “donate,” a word to be produced into an algorithmic couplet, as lifted from millions of words lifted from 19th century poetry.
The generator is the latest in the exploration of how storytelling can be automated, expanded, and experimented on using technologies of the present and future. I decided to test it out with a few Melville House buzzwords: “Melville,” “House,” “indie,” “publishing,” “maniac,” and “nothing.”
The end result is… a bunch of poetry. Would you like to read my poetry? I know you do:
“Melville”
“House”
“indie”
“publishing”
“nothing”
“life”