Experimenting with creative writing in LLMs was an insightful task. However, I would like to mention that I basically never do anything related to creative writing (maybe kind of a sad insight?), so I feel I might not be a good judge of an LLM’s creative output.

For the creative writing task, I tried several prompts and especially liked the output I got from the following prompt in ChatGPT and Perplexity (see attached Word document for the complete output):

• Generate a poem in the style of Edgar Allan Poe about the feeling of losing Wi-Fi when out camping in a forest.

Overall, I probably would not notice that the poems were actually written by an LLM. Maybe I could tell, if I were more familiar with Edgar Allan Poe’s writing style, but I can only remember his poem The Raven, which I read some years ago (see here, if you’re interested:https://www.btboces.org/Downloads/7_The%20Raven%20by%20Edgar%20Allen%20Poe.pdf) – so this was my main point of comparison.

Both LLMs did a really good job at capturing the dark, melancholic writing style of the author. Also, both poems used first-person narration, which is common for Poe.

Comparing the two LLMs, I think I liked Perplexity’s output more than ChatGPT’s, just because it flows better in my opinion. However, the stanzas are maybe a little short for a typical Poe poem, and I found one word of which I’m not sure whether it is made up or actually exists (maybe it is an archaic word) – embered.

Regarding the ChatGPT output, I noticed that some words were capitalized mid-sentence, and I didn’t know why that was the case. When I asked ChatGPT, it stated that this is typical of Poe’s writing style, so I compared it to his work The Raven. Indeed, I was able to find some words that were capitalized mid-sentence; however, this stylistic device was used very sparingly only, so I think that is a good example of how LLMs overuse a certain feature after detecting a pattern.

I think the outputs from both LLMs were very creative. In line with Boden’s (Arriagada & Arriagada-Bruneau, 2022) definition, I think being creative necessitates that an (art)work is novel, surprising, and valuable. Both poems succeeded in that they identified the author’s writing style (more or less) correctly and then applied it to a new context. As we also discussed in class, value, of course, is very subjective, as different people, cultures, etc., might have different understandings of what is valuable.

I was surprised by the studies showing that people appreciate artwork less when they know it was produced by AI (Arriagada & Arriagada-Bruneau, 2022). Similar to the example of the invention of photography, as we also briefly discussed in class, I think AI creativity will not replace but change human-made art. Nevertheless, I see that there is a bigger issue with AI than, for instance, the introduction of photography, given that AI is trained on people’s original ideas (predominantly without asking them for consent and permission), so I feel this is an issue that needs urgent attention.

Overall, I think the experiments were fun and a good way to get a feeling for LLMs’ potential to be used in creative work. I think my idea of creativity has always resembled the definition by Boden (Arriagada & Arriagada-Bruneau, 2022), but I couldn’t pin it down, so now I can better put into words what I consider creative.

Sources:

Arriagada, L., & Arriagada-Bruneau, G. (2022). AI’s Role in Creative Processes: A Functionalist Approach. Odradek. Studies in Philosophy of Literature, Aesthetics, and New Media Theories, 8 (1), 77-110.

Poe, Edgar, A. 1845. The Raven. Online https://www.btboces.org/Downloads/7_The%20Raven%20by%20Edgar%20Allen%20Poe.pdf

From what we learned in class on Tuesday, Arrigada defines creative as novel, valuable, and surprising, a bit differently from what I think. To me, I like the definition from Jeff Goins more as it defines creativity as an artist, leader, and individual:

Artist: Seeing the world differently from others.

Individual: Creativity is unique, something that doesn’t quite fit into any box.

Leader: Creativity is the leader. It should influence others to follow a trend or a movement, shaping perceptions and inspiring innovation.

Even though these definitions are different from what we had in our readings, they still relate to each other.

Today, we had an experiment with prompting using different types of prompts and models. I asked Claude AI and Deepseek to “generate a happy poem” without any further explanation, and here are the results I received:

From what I can see, the two models generate different tones:

Claude.AI has a more energetic and fantasy tone. It is more capable of giving you a vivid and playful imagination. However, I feel like this generated poem from Claude is off-topic since it is more like an adventure poem than a happy one.

On the other hand, Deepseek generates a happy poem with a completely different style. The poem leans toward the realistic and gentle style. It focuses on everyday joys — laughter, kindness, sunlight — that readers can connect with. I feel like this version is more relevant to the topic. However, if you looking for some strike or an explosive feeling, then this poem is not for you.

Overall, with a simple-looking prompt like this, it seems like both of the models generate in a very medium level. I can’t tell which one is better because both have a different approach style. But there is one thing for sure that if my prompt had been better with more details, the models could have generated a poem that matched my expectations.

References:

I believe AI is capable of creative writing this was my stance before and after our readings and lab in class. I think that its creative just in a different way then we are. AI is like a very skilled collaborator that brings tools to the table but needs you to steer the ship. It is really bad at creative writing when it is just given a broad topic or statement, but asking or giving the AI specific details allows it to work much better. I asked ChatGPT to “write a brief shakespearean style poem about traveling the world ” and the photo below was the result.

I think that it did a good job of using the language I wanted to but this poem is very bland and kind of all over the place. On another note I asked AI to “please generate 3 fictional relatable characters for my screen play” the photo below was the result.

I found that the responses showed very little bias and gave me a good verity of characters. Which was surprising considering the past reading and promoting that we had done before. I believe this happened because, recently I have worked with chat on a few intergroup relations articles that discussed bias and inclusivity.

Loi, M., Viganò, E., & van der Plas, L. (2020). The societal and ethical relevance of computational creativity(arXiv:2007.11973v1). arXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.11973

For my AI prompt, I asked AI to write song lyrics in the style of Gregory Alan Isakov. The image below contains the lyrics of an actual Gregory Alan Isakov song, “All Shades of Blue” for reference:

I prompted Claude AI to do the following: “Write a song in the style of Gregory Alan Isakov.” Below is Claude’s attempt:

It gets themes correct. These themes are present in various Gregory Alan Isakov songs. In essence, the style is correct. However, the way the AI puts these themes together feels, to me, lifeless. Also, it went a little overboard on the imagery of nature. The AI is trying to capture Gregory Alan Isakov’s profound ability to use clever, folksy abstractions that somehow connect to common human experience, but it falls short in small ways. I also did tests with Gemini and ChatGPT. All of these models have a general idea of the style of Gregory Alan Isakov. That being said, I believe creativity relies on novelty and value. Surprising is too much of a stretch. The world is mostly built on tiny increments of innovation. Therefore, I believe this to be creative output. None of these lyrics are copied from actual songs. The AI model knows the general style of Gregory Alan Isakov, and it is writing an original song from its general idea of what Gregory Alan Isakov could sound like. The song is new. While the song may not have much value to me, I believe the writing is technically and thematically strong to the point of possibly being valuable to others.

Arriagada used terms like novelty, surprise, and value to define creativity. I agree that creativity holds value, and it often comes from emotions and experiences. Which can be seen lacking in arts, poems, and stories written by AI.

Today in class, we gave different prompts to ChatGPT and Gemini. At first, we gave a simple prompt with not many details. We prompted ChatGPT and Gemini to write a poem about love, and they gave a very generic poem, and a lot of the wordings didn’t make much sense. But Gemini gave a better poem than ChatGPT. Then we prompted ChatGPT and Gemini to write a haiku about falling in love with a person. I think ChatGPT gave a better haiku than poem; however, the haiku given by Gemini ended abruptly.

This was the haiku written by ChatGPT

eyes met in stillness—
a world bloomed between heartbeats,
soft and sudden spring.

This was the haiku written by Gemini

Heart skips a quick beat,
World in new, vibrant colors,
Smiling just because.

I don’t think the poem and haiku written by ChatGPT and Gemini were creative. It is very generic and lacks emotion and value. This experiment shifted my perspective of AI’s creativity. Now, I believe the same poem or haiku written by a human would be much more creative than the ones written by an AI.

After our class discussions this week, I would define creativity as a process of reimagining reality through innovation and intentional action. I think of creativity as a deliberate way of shaping the world around us. Whether we’re solving problems, telling stories, or designing new systems, intentionality is what makes creativity powerful. Tools like AI can support creative work, but shouldn’t replace it.

My creative writing sample prompt: write a brief journal entry from the point of view of a yacht stewardess working during the busy summer season

I experimented with Google’s Gemini. I got inspiration for my prompt from a reality TV show called Below Deck, which follows crew members on yacht charters. I found the output interesting because of the characters it came up with (Mrs. Van Derlyn, Marco, and Eva) and because it chose to set the location in the Mediterranean. Although my prompt requested a brief journal entry, the output created a pretty engaging short story using vivid imagery, and a personal tone. I was most impressed with how Gemini integrated human emotions like frustration, appreciation, and hope.

One idea that really connected to my experience, and is a key take-away from this week is that “AI-generated art is inorganic but aesthetically appealing. It is not here to displace human-generated art but rather as a new genre that provides a different experience and should be understood and respected within its own context.” (Arriagada, 2022) AI might not create with human intention, but when we use it thoughtfully, it can still help us express ideas in new and valuable ways. What we prompt, how we respond, and why we create helps give creativity its true meaning.