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Phillip Carter's avatar

I find a great many artists and poets have no aspiration to be original at all. They don't want to tell a story, or to explore, or to have the hardship of putting in effort. What they want is to be "the next FAMOUS POET NAME" and to live off the royalties forever.

It's a fine aspiration to have, but it is boring, and it is why literature was already decomposing before AI started jumping up and down on the body.

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Peter's avatar

Here's another take on originality, one I strive to follow.

A writer does not own words any more than a painter owns colors. So lets dispense with this originality fetish…Look, listen and transcribe and forget about being original.

~ William S. Burroughs

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Judson Stacy Vereen's avatar

Thanks, Peter!

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Judson Stacy Vereen's avatar

Shit…never heard this…but..yeah..I think, yeah!

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LaMonica Curator's avatar

Well this is the point. It’s what you DO with it.

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Tristan Ruark's avatar

I watched a video similar to this topic on YT yesterday by the Roughest Drafts. It was called Has AI Killed poetry.

One of the things that stood out to me from the video is that AI will plagiarize a poem by changing only a few words. I see this as a problem in which original works could be lost if people like me are a bit lazy and think they’re are getting over by having AI provide me with poems from say, Wadsworth. But Said version.

Similar to how Disney took Tarzan and made it into something unrecognizable to the book. So much so that tik tokkers have a video saying the Tarzan’s parent went to the coronation of Queen Elsa and it was there ship that got shipwrecked or some kind of bullshit.

The point is: if you read the Tarzan books you already know who Tarzan’s parents are. It isn’t a mystery.

Now we have AI re writing great poems maybe one day will original vers be bastardized and the masses are none the wiser?

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Judson Stacy Vereen's avatar

It is a good question...I think for most things, we will remain "none the wiser"....

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