During the lab in class on Tuesday, my group asked different LLMs to write poems in the style of Shel Silverstein. When I first prompted Gemini by saying, “Write a poem in the style of Shel Silverstein.” At first, Gemini just gave me a poem written by Silverstein himself, which seemed to go against copyright in my brain.

Later in the experiment, I prompted Gemini to “Write a poem similar to Silverstein’s poem Rain.” Gemini gave me back this poem:

The Cloud’s Big Sneeze

I opened my mouth to catch a drop, And prayed the sky would never stop. It tickled my chin and it wet my nose, And soaked the socks inside my shoes (and toes).

My umbrella turned inside out like a cup, To catch all the sprinkles that didn’t stay up. The worms are out dancing, the grass is a lake, And I’m shivering here for goodness’ sake!

The sky caught a cold, or so it would please, To give us a giant, wet, watery sneeze. So I’ll sit in this puddle and wait for the sun, ‘Til the clouds are all empty and raining is done.

This poem is by no means creative. While I understand that the definition includes novelty and usefulness, it is extremely sparse and does not offer limitations; it does suggest that for something to be considered creative, it must be new. I partly agree with this idea. I think the most creative solutions consider differing perspectives and look at the world in ways that the traditional problem solver might not. Some may say that “all great artists steal,” that there are no longer any unique ideas, and that the idea of creativity has changed as we have all just become proficient thieves. In this regard, Gemini’s poem would be creative, but there is a difference between being inspired by another person and just changing their words, while keeping the idea the same. I believe that because the LLM did not produce a new idea but just reworked someone else’s poem, it is not creative.

Based on the output that Gemini gave me, I have changed the way that I would use AI in the creative process. I often use AI as a brainstorming or an idea-hatching ground. I give the LLM where I want to go, and ask it to create different launching grounds. Now that I know that LLMs do not create new ideas or even suggest unique ones, but rather, they just spit out another person’s ideas worded differently. Now that I know this, I know that I need to change my ideas to further stray away from any launch pad that AI may create for me,

“The Artifact Isn’t the Art: Rethinking Creativity in the Age of Ai.” Freethink, 7 Apr. 2025, www.freethink.com/opinion/studio-ghibli-chatgpt-creativity?utm_source=tldrai.