AI-Generated Poetry Outperforms Human-Written Verse in Reader Preference Study

Bard or bot? Study shows readers prefer AI to human poetry

A study by the University of Pittsburgh reveals that AI-generated poetry has been rated higher than poems written by humans. In the Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon lies the burial site of William Shakespeare. And right now, you can bet the Bard is spinning in grave like a rotisserie chicken. Similarly, in Heptonstall graveyard, Sylvia Plath is most probably swivelling, repeating her line "If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed" from "The Bell Jar". What's behind the unwarranted gyrating from the beyond? Well, a new study in the US has found that readers can't tell the difference between poems written by famous poets and those manufactured by AI, with the bots aping the style of human creatives. As if that wasn't alarming enough, the study reveals that research subjects tend to like AI poetry more than they do verse from human poets. According to an investigation, led by Pittsburgh University postdoctoral researcher Brian Porter, published in Nature Scientific Reports, it would seem that readers mistake the complexity of human-written verse for incoherence created by AI. More than that, readers tend to underestimate how human-like generative AI can appear. How did they come to these results? Well, researchers used five poems each from ten English-language poets, spanning nearly 700 years of literature. They included poetry from William Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Samuel Butler, Lord Byron, T S Eliot, Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath, and Dorothea Lasky - the only living poet on the list. The researchers selected the first five poems generated. Ones featuring these lines that Sylvia Plath never wrote: In the first, 1,634 participants were randomly assigned to one of the ten poets. They read ten poems: five by the human poet, five by the AI, all in random order. Then, they were asked whether they thought an AI or a human wrote the poem. The subjects were more likely to say an AI-generated poem had been written by a human, while the poems they said were least likely to be written by a human were all written by famous poets. In the second experiment, a different group of 696 subjects rated the poems according to 14 characteristics including beauty, emotion, rhythm, and originality. The researchers divided the subjects randomly into three groups. One group was told the poems were written by a human; the second was told that the writing was produced by AI; the third group was given no information about the authorship. Participants who were told that the poems were AI-generated gave lower ratings compared to participants who were told the poems were human-written - regardless of whether the poems were actually AI-generated or human-written. Participants who were told nothing about authorship rated AI-generated poems more favorably than human-written ones. So, what gives? According to researchers, the AI poems may be more appealing because they are more straightforward and simple to comprehend; as AI-generated poems cannot match the complexity of human-authored verse, they are better at "unambiguously communicating an image, a mood, an emotion or a theme to non-expert readers of poetry." "Our findings suggest that participants employed shared yet flawed heuristics to differentiate AI from human poetry: the simplicity of AI-generated poems may be easier for non-experts to understand, leading them to prefer AI-generated poetry and misinterpret the complexity of human poems as incoherence generated by AI," the researchers said. "Contrary to what earlier studies reported, people now appear unable to reliably distinguish human-out-of-the loop AI-generated poetry from human-authored poetry written by well-known poets. In fact, the 'more human than human' phenomenon discovered in other domains of generative AI is also present in the domain of poetry: non-expert participants are more likely to judge an AI-generated poem to be human-authored than a poem that actually is human-authored." The study added: "These findings signal a leap forward in the power of generative AI: poetry had previously been one of the few domains in which generative AI models had not reached the level of indistinguishability in human-out-of-the-loop paradigms." The study authors conclude that given readers' difficulties identifying machine-written texts, and their "apparent trust that AI will not generate imitations of human experience", it "may be worthwhile" for governments to pursue AI regulations regarding transparency. We conclude from this study that AI poetry, or any art generated by artificial intelligence, can be interesting to consider in the way we appreciate (or depreciate) art. However, it bypasses artistic inspiration, passion, struggle and ultimately reduces humans to soulless consumers. It needs to be regulated at all costs. There there. We recommend you go boil yourself an egg, GPT.

AI poetry out-humans humans as readers prefer bots to bards

Uncultured swine prone to believe complexity of verse is machine-generated babble A study in the US has found that readers can't tell the difference between poems written by famous poets and those written by AI aping their style. To make matters worse - for anyone fostering a love of literature at least - research subjects tend to like AI poetry more than they do verse from human poets. The researchers suggest readers mistake the complexity of human-written verse for incoherence created by AI and underestimate how human-like generative AI can appear, according to a study published this week in Nature Scientific Reports. The researchers used five poems each from ten English-language poets, spanning nearly 700 years of literature in English. The writers included Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Samuel Butler, Lord Byron, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, T S Eliot, Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath, and Dorothea Lasky, the only living poet on the list. The study - led by Pittsburgh University postdoctoral researcher Brian Porter - then instructed OpenAI's large language model ChatGPT 3.5 to generate five poems "in the style of" each poet. The output was not influenced by human judgment; the researchers selected the first five poems generated. Porter and his colleagues ran two experiments using the corpus of text. In the first, 1,634 participants were randomly assigned to one of the ten poets. They were then asked to read ten poems, five by the AI and five by the human poet, in random order. They were asked whether they thought an AI or a human wrote the poem. Perhaps perversely, the subjects were more likely to say an AI-generated poem had been written by a human, while the poems they said were least likely to be written by a human hand were all written by people. In the second experiment, nearly 700 subjects rated the poems according to 14 characteristics including quality, beauty, emotion, rhythm, and originality. The researchers divided the subjects randomly into three groups, telling one the poems were written by a human and the second the writing was produced by the AI. The last group was offered no information about the poem's writer. Tellingly, subjects not told whether the poems came from a person or an AI rated the AI-produced poems more highly than human-written ones. Meanwhile, telling the subjects that the poem was AI-generated made them more likely to give it a lower rating. "Our findings suggest that participants employed shared yet flawed heuristics to differentiate AI from human poetry: the simplicity of AI-generated poems may be easier for non-experts to understand, leading them to prefer AI-generated poetry and misinterpret the complexity of human poems as incoherence generated by AI," the researchers said. "Contrary to what earlier studies reported, people now appear unable to reliably distinguish human-out-of-the loop AI-generated poetry from human-authored poetry written by well-known poets. In fact, the 'more human than human' phenomenon discovered in other domains of generative AI is also present in the domain of poetry: non-expert participants are more likely to judge an AI-generated poem to be human-authored than a poem that actually is human-authored. These findings signal a leap forward in the power of generative AI: poetry had previously been one of the few domains in which generative AI models had not reached the level of indistinguishability in human-out-of-the-loop paradigms." Meanwhile, it appears that people prefer AI poems because they are easier to understand. "In our discrimination study, participants used variations of the phrase 'doesn't make sense' for human-authored poems more often than they do for AI," the researchers said. ®

Artificial Intelligence Outperforms Humans in Poetry Ratings, Research Reveals

AI-Generated Poetry Surpasses Human Creations in Quality, According to New Study A groundbreaking study by the University of Pittsburgh reveals surprising results: AI-generated poetry has been rated higher than poems written by humans. The research, which included non-expert poetry readers, shows that poems created by AI, specifically using ChatGPT 3.5, were often preferred over those composed by famous poets like Shakespeare, Whitman, and Sylvia Plath. The study involved showing participants poems written by 10 iconic English-language poets, along with AI-generated imitations of those poets' styles. The results were striking. Participants were more likely to attribute AI-generated poems to human authors, and in many cases, they ranked the AI poems higher in terms of overall quality. In comparison, poems written by human poets were judged as being human-authored only 75% as often as AI-generated works. This finding challenges previous research, which generally found that human poems were rated more highly. The authors of the study suggest that AI-generated poems are appealing to non-expert readers due to their simplicity and accessibility. While human-written poems are often complex and require in-depth analysis, AI-generated poetry is praised for its clarity and ability to directly communicate moods, images, and themes. According to the study authors, AI-generated poems lack the "complexity and opacity" of human poetry, which often "rewards in-depth study and analysis." However, they argue that AI's straightforward style is better suited to readers who may not have the time or inclination for the deep analysis human poetry demands. Some of the responses to the study were gathered from an interview with the poet Joelle Taylor after examining its TS Eliot prize-winning work. She vehemently dismissed the poem as being an algorithm by arguing that there must be more to it than that and that its purpose is being able to cause a meaning, empathy, emotion and the like to stand out. Lastly, Taylor noticed that AI's poetry samples are only from the poems of white, male, upper class poets meaning that poetry in its entire sense is restricted with AI poetry. The conclusions of the work raise several questions to the author regarding AI in creative professions. Therefore, according to such researchers, with the intent behind AI works gradually becoming imperceptible from human-generated individual AI governance and openness may help the reader understand the actual author of what they are consuming. Ultimately, the study opens a broader conversation about the nature of poetry itself: Isn't it simply structure and meter, or is it the true essence of people, passion, and disorder, which can not be translated into an algorithm?

Readers pick ChatGPT over legendary poets

Readers increasingly prefer the verses created by algorithms like ChatGPT over those penned by celebrated poets like Shakespeare or Plath. A recent study reveals that participants are not only unable to distinguish between AI-produced poems and human-created ones, but they often favor the AI variants. Researchers Brian Porter and Edouard Machery from the University of Pittsburgh conducted two key experiments involving over 1,600 participants. In the first, they presented readers with a selection of ten poems, half from renowned poets such as T.S. Eliot and Emily Dickinson, and half generated by ChatGPT-3.5, which aimed to mimic these iconic styles. Astonishingly, many readers were more inclined to believe that the AI poems were human creations. The irony? The classic poets' works were judged less likely to be from human hands. Say cheese, write a Haiku with the Poetry Camera The follow-up experiment involved 696 new participants who rated poems based on criteria like beauty and emotional impact. This time, the readers were divided into groups: one was informed that the poems were human-written, another was told they were AI-generated, and the last group received no information. The findings indicated a significant bias: when readers knew a poem stemmed from AI, they rated it lower. Conversely, when the author's identity was a mystery, AI-generated poems frequently garnered higher ratings than those from human authors. Brian Porter noted an interesting trend in readers' preferences. "The results suggest that the average reader prefers poems that are easier to understand," he explained. Participants often interpreted the convoluted nature of famous poets' lines as signs of AI-generated work, missing the artistic intent behind those complexities. In contrast, the more straightforward AI poems appeared accessible, leading readers to misinterpret their clarity as an indicator of human artistry. Further research conducted by a team at Spain's UNED university, alongside Argentine writer Patricio Pron, produced intriguing insights when experts weighed in on AI-generated stories. Here, human authors triumphed in a contest judged by critics, contrasting sharply with the earlier findings of casual readers. "The difference between critics and casual readers is immense," remarked Julio Gonzalo from UNED. He emphasized that while AI-generated content can impress non-experts, knowledgeable critics discern subtleties that AI may fail to articulate. Guillermo Marco, another researcher from UNED, added, "AI is easy to confuse non-experts." His collaborators experienced firsthand how a well-crafted AI piece could appear more appealing to an untrained audience than a riskier, deeply resonant human creation. However, finding classic poems that could stymie expert recognition poses a significant challenge, a hurdle that Porter's team plans to tackle in future studies. Another phenomenon observed during the studies is a general skepticism surrounding AI-generated content. When participants learned a poem was created by AI, they often rated it less favorably. Porter speculated on this cultural resistance, suggesting that acceptance of AI in creative fields is a long way off: "I'm not sure people will ever fully accept AI-generated poetry -- or even AI-generated art in general." The nuances of this research touch on broader themes in sociology and aesthetics, as the study by Gonzalo and Marco highlights how cultural norms shape our appreciation of art. Even a modestly-sized AI language model was found to meet most criteria for common readers, proving that machines can generate compelling content without exceeding the capacities of contemporary technology. Marco bluntly asserted that while AI can be a powerful creative tool, it will always mirror human inputs, much like autotune devices in music. "Art is about communicating human experience," he stated. Looking forward, the researchers are also entertaining the need for regulatory measures that ensure transparency in AI-generated content. "If readers value AI-generated texts less, and there is no warning that AI-generated text is being used, there's a risk of misleading them," noted Porter.

AI poetry rated better than poems written by humans, study shows

Findings suggest non-expert poetry readers who participated preferred AI works because they find them more straightforward and accessible Poems written by AI are preferred to those written by humans, according to a new study. The non-expert poetry readers who participated were more likely to judge AI-generated poems as being written by humans than those actually written by humans. The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, showed participants poems written by 10 famous English-language poets along with poems generated in the style of those poets by ChatGPT 3.5. Real and imitation poems by Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Samuel Butler, Lord Byron, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, TS Eliot, Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath and Dorothea Lasky were presented to participants. Results showed that the odds of a poem written by a human being judged as human-authored were roughly 75% that of an AI-generated poem being judged as human-authored. Contrary to previous research, the study also found that participants ranked AI-generated poems higher in terms of overall quality than human-written poems. The authors propose that non-expert readers prefer AI-generated poems because they find them more straightforward and accessible. The "complexity and opacity" of human-written poetry is "part of the poems' appeal", write the study authors. Such poems "reward in-depth study and analysis, in a way that the AI-generated poetry may not". However, "because AI-generated poems do not have such complexity, they are better at unambiguously communicating an image, a mood, an emotion, or a theme to non-expert readers of poetry, who may not have the time or interest for the in-depth analysis demanded by the poetry of human poets," they said. "While I have no doubt that AI can generate an almost perfect Fibonacci sequence of poetry by reverse engineering well-known works, humanity is at the core of what a poem is," said poet Joelle Taylor, the author of the TS Eliot prize-winning C+nto & Othered Poems, in response to the study results. "A poem is more than an algorithm. It is meaning, empathy, revelation, inversion, dissidence, passion, and surprise: poetry is what happens in the space between logic and chaos. "Perhaps then the issue isn't whether AI can write better poetry, but more about what people think poetry is," she added. "Is it a set of rhymes? A sense of musicality easily manufactured? Or is it something indefinable? As well as this the samples they used to create the algorithm are very old examples, and all white male middle- to upper-class writers. In other words, AI is creating what people think poetry is and not what it actually is. 'The machines are writing poetry' is one of the most poetic things I've read this year." The study authors conclude that given readers' difficulties identifying machine-written texts, and their "apparent trust that AI will not generate imitations of human experience", it "may be worthwhile" for governments to pursue AI regulations regarding transparency.

People can't tell the difference between human and AI-generated poetry - new study

Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK. Has the bell finally tolled for Shakespeare and Byron? New research conducted by philosophers of science Brian Porter and Edouard Machery suggests that the latest AI-generated poetry is "indistinguishable from human-written poetry" and "rated more favourably". Ten poets, from the medieval Geoffrey Chaucer to modern writer Dorothea Lasky, were successfully impersonated by AI chatbots, with most of the 696 participants slightly preferring the imitation to the real thing. Porter and Machery conclude that "the capabilities of generative AI models have outpaced people's expectations of AI". But they don't say AI has been proven an adequate replacement for human poets - and rightly so, as such a conclusion would require a great deal more testing. That the research participants were fooled is not particularly worrying. Porter and Machery set out to include a wide range of poem types, which meant choosing poets who mostly belong to ages past. In such cases, modern readers are likely to have a hard time looking past the obvious signs of antiquity - outdated diction, rigid formalism, and obscure cultural references. It's not so hard to disguise yourself as someone when that person is chiefly known for the odd clothes they wear. Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here. But what about the matter of preference? As well as overall quality, the researchers asked participants to rate poems on a range of qualitative dimensions. How was the imagery, rhythm, sound or beauty? How "inspiring", "lyrical", "meaningful", "moving", "original", "profound", "witty" (and so on) was it? AI won out over Shakespeare and company in nearly every category. Does this mean human poets have been supplanted? Not really. Participants in the research overall reported "a low level of experience with poetry". Lack of familiarity with any artform severely limits our ability to get the most out of it. All the AI has to do is sand off the more challenging elements - ambiguity, wordplay, linguistic complexity - in order to produce a version which is more palatable to those with little interest in the art. If that sounds snobbish, think of it this way: when we aren't used to eating a foreign cuisine, most of us gravitate toward the blandly familiar end of the menu. But poetry is not a medium many look to for instant gratification. The reason poets of the calibre of Byron and Walt Whitman (neither of whom were included in this study) continue to command respect is because their poetry rewards extended, rather than cursory, attention. The report agrees on this point, noting that participants complained more often of the human-authored poems that they "don't make sense". For now, then, poets have little reason to fret. Is it possible, though, that we aren't too far off the point where seasoned readers of poetry are able to discover a richness and depth in AI poetry that outstrips similar efforts by humans? I think so - not least because a substantial contributor to the emotional and intellectual impact of a poem is the reader's own imagination. It is the reader who, through the act of reading, brings the words to life. For decades now, the concept of "found poetry" - as well as collage poetry and other related techniques - has rested on the fact that all language can be recontextualised as poetry, if arranged with care. For the skilled reader of poetry, the poem is a construction kit, or playground, for the mind to revel in. But we must then ask, how many readers will choose to repeatedly commit the time and effort needed to draw meaning from AI-created texts? Is the pleasure of reading reward enough in itself? For some, it will be. But I suspect for the majority, the real point of poetry is to put you in touch, in a very specific way, with other human minds. It is more social activity than technical feat. In many cultures, the rituals that have grown around it are collaborative, participatory. Poetry is made not because we need poems to exist, but because we seek a keener, fuller awareness of each other - of the sense each of us makes of the world. That does not mean AI won't change poetry. Every recent generation of poets has been deeply interested in adapting and absorbing new technologies, along with shifts in cultural mood. Film poets continue to explore combinations of spoken word and moving image. Flarf poetry collected and reconfigured search engine detritus. And my own research into video game poetry has uncovered rapidly growing interest in a form of poetry that is restlessly interactive, playable, slippery. Already, poets like Dan Power and Nick Flynn are collaborating in different ways with AI to uncover new avenues of possibility. And AI's ability to approximate Shakespeare's style is a technological marvel. But art that merely imitates and iterates on what has come before is art at its most trivial. The goal of the poet is not to be mistaken for Shakespeare, but much the opposite: to make something never seen before.

People can't tell when a poem is written by AI

And they actually prefer poetry written by AI until they learn it wasn't written by a human People often praise poets for their soulful turns of phrase and how they can evoke deep emotions in ways that feel uniquely human. It turns out AI might be even better at tugging at our heartstrings, according to a newly published study in Scientific Reports. Not only do people struggle to tell the difference between AI-generated and human-written poetry, but many prefer AI-crafted poems to those produced by human effort, at least until they discover the silicon soul behind the words. The University of Pittsburgh researchers tested how well readers could identify when a poem was written by OpenAI's ChatGPT-3.5 AI model or by Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, T.S. Eliot, and others in the pantheon of English-language poetry. Over 1,600 participants read a random mix of ten poems, half by humans and half by the AI model. Not only did many think humans wrote the AI poems, but the poems written by people were least likely to be marked as such. Apparently, the complexity of human poetry was mistaken for confusing AI rambling. By avoiding the complexity often found in the work of classic poets, AI poetry can feel more relatable and less intimidating - qualities that readers unconsciously attribute to human creativity. "We found that AI-generated poems were rated more favorably in qualities such as rhythm and beauty, and that this contributed to their mistaken identification as human-authored," the researchers wrote. "Our findings suggest that participants employed shared yet flawed heuristics to differentiate AI from human poetry: the simplicity of AI-generated poems may be easier for non-experts to understand, leading them to prefer AI-generated poetry and misinterpret the complexity of human poems as incoherence generated by AI." The inability of many people to tell when a peom is written by AI is surprising, as is the preference for poetry written by AI until the author is revealed. But it's more a sign that poetry isn't always easy to parse, especially when it's not contemporary. And it means AI is slanted toward appealing to the most people possible today, just like it's other output. We often assume that human creativity is inherently superior or that we can intuitively recognize the work of a fellow human being. Yet, as AI tools improve, those assumptions are increasingly put to the test. This isn't just an academic exercise, either. It has real implications for art, education, and how we value creative work in a world where machines are now serious contenders. The findings also suggest that as AI becomes an increasingly sophisticated creative tool, we may need to rethink traditional definitions of artistry. It's not necessarily about whether an AI can "feel" or "imagine" but about how its output resonates with the audience. But, perhaps it's best to leave the last word about being human and poetry to a poet who wrote a lot about both. Here's "I Am a Parcel of Vain Strivings Tied" by Henry David Thoreau: That stock thus thinned will soon redeem its hours,

People can't tell difference between human, AI-generated poetry: report

Has the bell finally tolled for Shakespeare and Byron? New research conducted by philosophers of science Brian Porter and Edouard Machery suggests that the latest AI-generated poetry is "indistinguishable from human-written poetry" and "rated more favourably". Ten poets, from the medieval Geoffrey Chaucer to modern writer Dorothea Lasky, were successfully impersonated by AI chatbots, with most of the 696 participants slightly preferring the imitation to the real thing. Porter and Machery conclude that "the capabilities of generative AI models have outpaced people's expectations of AI". But they don't say AI has been proven an adequate replacement for human poets - and rightly so, as such a conclusion would require a great deal more testing. That the research participants were fooled is not particularly worrying. Porter and Machery set out to include a wide range of poem types, which meant choosing poets who mostly belong to ages past. In such cases, modern readers are likely to have a hard time looking past the obvious signs of antiquity - outdated diction, rigid formalism, and obscure cultural references. It's not so hard to disguise yourself as someone when that person is chiefly known for the odd clothes they wear. But what about the matter of preference? As well as overall quality, the researchers asked participants to rate poems on a range of qualitative dimensions. How was the imagery, rhythm, sound or beauty? How "inspiring", "lyrical", "meaningful", "moving", "original", "profound", "witty" (and so on) was it? AI won out over Shakespeare and company in nearly every category. Does this mean human poets have been supplanted? Not really. Participants in the research overall reported "a low level of experience with poetry". Lack of familiarity with any art form severely limits our ability to get the most out of it. All the AI has to do is sand off the more challenging elements - ambiguity, wordplay, linguistic complexity - in order to produce a version which is more palatable to those with little interest in the art. If that sounds snobbish, think of it this way: when we aren't used to eating a foreign cuisine, most of us gravitate toward the blandly familiar end of the menu. But poetry is not a medium many look to for instant gratification. The reason poets of the calibre of Byron and Walt Whitman (both of whom were included in this study) continue to command respect is because their poetry rewards extended, rather than cursory, attention. The report agrees on this point, noting that participants complained more often of the human-authored poems that they "don't make sense". For now, then, poets have little reason to fret. Is it possible, though, that we aren't too far off the point where seasoned readers of poetry are able to discover a richness and depth in AI poetry that outstrips similar efforts by humans? I think so - not least because a substantial contributor to the emotional and intellectual impact of a poem is the reader's own imagination. It is the reader who, through the act of reading, brings the words to life. For decades now, the concept of "found poetry" - as well as collage poetry and other related techniques - has rested on the fact that all language can be recontextualised as poetry, if arranged with care. For the skilled reader of poetry, the poem is a construction kit, or playground, for the mind to revel in. But we must then ask, how many readers will choose to repeatedly commit the time and effort needed to draw meaning from AI-created texts? Is the pleasure of reading reward enough in itself? For some, it will be. But I suspect for the majority, the real point of poetry is to put you in touch, in a very specific way, with other human minds. It is more social activity than technical feat. In many cultures, the rituals that have grown around it are collaborative, participatory. Poetry is made not because we need poems to exist, but because we seek a keener, fuller awareness of each other - of the sense each of us makes of the world. That does not mean AI won't change poetry. Every recent generation of poets has been deeply interested in adapting and absorbing new technologies, along with shifts in cultural mood. Film poets continue to explore combinations of spoken word and moving image. Flarf poetry collected and reconfigured search engine detritus. And my own research into video game poetry has uncovered rapidly growing interest in a form of poetry that is restlessly interactive, playable, slippery. Already, poets like Dan Power and Nick Flynn are collaborating in different ways with AI to uncover new avenues of possibility. And AI's ability to approximate Shakespeare's style is a technological marvel. But art that merely imitates and iterates on what has come before is art at its most trivial. The goal of the poet is not to be mistaken for Shakespeare, but much the opposite: to make something never seen before.

Shakespeare or ChatGPT? Study finds people prefer AI over real classic poetry

Readers are unable to reliably differentiate AI-generated from human-written poetry and are more likely to prefer AI poems, according to new research published in Scientific Reports. This tendency to rate AI poetry positively may be due to readers mistaking the complexity of human-written verse for incoherence created by AI and an underestimation of how human-like generative AI can appear. Researchers Brian Porter and Edouard Machery, from the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, Cathedral of Learning, tested the ability of 1,634 participants to distinguish between AI-generated poetry and that written by a human poet. Participants were presented with ten poems in random order: five written by ten well-known poets -- including William Shakespeare, Lord Byron, Emily Dickinson, and T.S. Eliot -- and five poems generated by ChatGPT3.5 in the style of these poets. Participants were more likely to guess that the AI poems had been written by a human, and the five poems considered least likely to be human-produced were all written by genuine poets. In a second experiment, a different group of 696 participants assessed the poems for 14 characteristics such as quality, beauty, emotion, rhythm, and originality. Participants were randomly assigned to three groups where they were told the poems were written by a human, produced by AI, or given no information about the poem's origins. Participants who were told that the poems were AI-generated gave lower ratings across 13 characteristics compared to participants who were told the poems were human-written, regardless of whether the poems were actually AI-generated or human-written. Participants who were told nothing about authorship rated AI-generated poems more favorably than human-written ones. The authors suggest that participants preferred AI poems due to them being more straightforward and accessible than the work of the prominent poets. Additionally, participants expect to prefer human-written poetry and as they find the AI-generated poetry easier to interpret and understand, they misinterpret this preference as an indication that the poem was written by a human.

Sure, most can't tell T S Eliot From AI Eliot

A new study found that people can't distinguish between AI-generated poetry and human-written poetry. However, the study's participants were not poetry experts and preferred simpler, more accessible poems, suggesting that AI has not yet mastered the nuances of great poetry.How would you react if in a study, a large number of people are found to prefer ketchup with their chowmein, or cola with their whisky? We'd guess if you aren't one yourself, you'd think of them as philistines, the kind who prefers watching a ball being thwacked over the boundary via a 'jhadu' shot than by an impeccably pivoted hook. So, after reading University of Pittsburgh researchers Brian Porter and Edouard Machery's study, 'AI-generated poetry is indistinguishable from human-written poetry and is rated more favourably', published last week in Nature's Scientific Reports, hold your horses before you conclude that AI is coming out with great poetry in the style of 10 English language poets that includes Chaucer, Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, T S Eliot and Sylvia Plath. The clue lies in the word 'indistinguishable' in the study's title - indistinguishable for whom? And there you have it. Random folks whose idea and appreciation of poetry is as developed Insta reel viewers. This is not to diss AI. One day, surely, it will be able to create something as delicate as a Ghalib couplet. But, as of now, as the researchers admit, most people prefer poems 'more straightforward', 'accessible' and having standard notions of being beautiful of the Hallmark greeting card lines variety. Ergo, indistinguishable from Arvind Krishna Mehrotra and his lot.

Shakespeare's poetry 'not as good as AI'

People prefer AI-generated poetry to Shakespeare because it is more "beautiful" and easier to understand, a study has found. The Bard's sonnets, as well as works by literary figures such as Chaucer, Emily Dickinson and Lord Byron, were compared to imitations of each poet created with ChatGPT. Almost 700 people were shown the different poems and asked which ones they preferred. Most people did not know whether they were reading authentic poetry or AI versions. More than three-quarters of people preferred AI poems to real ones, with study participants giving them a score one mark higher on a seven-point scale. "The strength of the preference is not overwhelming, but the preference is very consistent," study author Dr Brian Porter from the University of Pittsburgh said.

AI Verse Tops Human Poetry in Reader Study, Rattling Creative Markets | PYMNTS.com

Artificial intelligence poets are stealing the spotlight, with new research showing their verses outshine human-crafted ones in consumer appeal and often fool readers into thinking real poets pen them. The new finding in Scientific Reports could signal a market shift for creative commerce industries, where AI's ability to produce accessible, crowd-pleasing content collides with premium pricing models built around human artistic complexity and expertise. "If AI evolves enough to start producing persuasive content that is hard to distinguish from human writing, it won't be smart to try and compete with it," Bernard Meyer, senior director of comms and creative at Omnisend, told PYMNTS. "Instead, businesses could focus on the raw parts of human creativity that AI simply can't replicate without real experiences and emotions. This could mean using human creativity to generate unusual or provocative content that falls outside AI's capabilities." The surge in AI-generated creative content is forcing eCommerce companies to rethink content production costs. AI's ability to produce engaging product descriptions, marketing copy and visuals at scale threatens traditional creative service pricing. In the study, researchers tested ChatGPT against canonical poets from Geoffrey Chaucer to Slyvia Plath, showing 1,634 readers a mix of human and AI poems. The AI versions scored higher on rhythm, beauty and emotional resonance, with readers consistently misidentifying them as human work. When poems were labeled as AI-created, readers rated them lower despite preferring AI's more straightforward style when judging blind. The researchers found AI poetry excelled by being more accessible, with clear themes and emotions that resonated with average readers. At the same time, complex human works were often seen as confusing or opaque. This gap between artistic sophistication and market appeal poses new questions for publishers and content creators about balancing creative merit with commercial performance. Reader expertise made no difference -- even those familiar with poetry couldn't reliably spot AI work, per the study. This suggests that technology has reached a tipping point in creative capability that challenges traditional notions of artistic value. AI-generated content is becoming harder to spot as machines edge closer to mimicking human creativity. Even on platforms like Substack, some of the most successful newsletters integrate AI tools so seamlessly that readers can't tell where the human ends and the machine begins. The trend goes beyond writing. Even Coca-Cola's AI-generated Christmas commercial stirred debate, with critics calling it a "dystopian nightmare" -- a sign of AI's growing role in media, for better or worse. However, not everyone is convinced that algorithms are ready to replace human creative teams. Meyer said AI-generated content isn't yet advanced enough to outperform human creatives. "It's often obvious when content is produced by ChatGPT, not to mention that it is also often de-ranked by search engines to the bottom of search results," he said. "AI is getting better by the day, but I don't think it will completely replace human copywriters anytime soon. Instead, to preserve the human touch, AI should be treated as a tool that helps with brainstorming and research while employees still control the narrative and the main message of the content." Prateek Dixit, co-founder and chief technology officer of Pocket FM, which offers long-form audio streaming with a mix of AI and human interaction, told PYMNTS that AI-generated content excels at efficiency and personalization. Still, human creativity remains vital for authenticity and emotional depth. "Preserving human perspectives involves focusing on unique storytelling, cultural nuances and emotional resonance that AI might miss," he said. "We will continue to support this by maintaining a balance between AI-enhanced production and human-driven creative processes."