In last weeks lab, the class went on to use AI in ways to engage in creative thinking. This was done by using AI to generate a poem as a start. It was very generic due to the weak prompting at first but after giving it some more specific details about what kind of poem AI was supposed to write, the LLM started to get more sophisticated with the response. This applied to other applications such as building a DnD character in my case. I have not played DnD before, but I am aware of the creative freedom the journey’s can go on, so I wanted to see what ChatGPT would create for me. I asked for a character name, backstory, and suggested items to ChatGPT.

When it comes to this creative response, I have to say I do not agree that something needs to be novel in order for it the be creative. A lot of this response has pieces in it that are, on their own, not original. Though, when you consider all of the pieces put together to make this unique character. That’s when you get novelty, surprise, and value all in one (Arriagada & Arriagada-Brunea, 2022). The surprise factor comes from the character’s backstory alongside the value. More value can be expected if you intend on using this character during a campaign. That is why I thought this response was great for creative outlook. DnD is full of creativity, and you could seemingly regenerate the same prompt and get endless amounts of characters to choose from. This method of using AI in a field that is already very creative is a perfect use for it. Creating characters in this way can cut down on time thinking, or even completely, while creating a unique character to go on campaigns.

creative.docx

This week’s experiment challenged AI to do something uniquely human: write emotionally charged break-up dialogues. I tested how different models handled both a generic couple’s fight and a more specific prompt featuring Elena and Damon from The Vampire Diaries, to see if AI could show real creativity.

For this weekly AI lab, we gave different prompts to open AI. I used Gemini and Deepseek to generate the poem. First of all, I just typed the basic requirement, “write a haiku about happiness,” to both AIs. Then, I added ”a haiku about an abandoned amusement park at dusk, with a twist in the last line.”

It is undeniable that AI can indeed create very creative poems like human poets and writers. However, the advantages created by AI are that it is not easy for people to empathize with some poems written in the context of ancient, modern, and even the “future world” created by AI. Arriagada and Arriagada-Bruneau (2022) mentioned that AI has unique, novel and peculiar creativity. The robust database and algorithm can combine existing poem imitation and autonomous creativity to write better poems. For example, Germini wrote “The storm that cracks the distant coast, The market’s sudden, sharp decline,
A future unforeseen, embossed.” AI uses poems to analyze the current situation of modern society, using the poems written in combination with modern society mentioned above.

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.

Poem generated by Germini

Poem generated by Deepseek

write a poem that involves chaos theory

Deepseek: A wingtip fractures the air—
somewhere, a monsoon drowns a city.
The pendulum knows this:
its arc, a riddle of gravity and rage,
swings wide enough to unstitch the sky.

We map the static between stars,
trace fault lines in the static of our hands.
Each fingerprint a cipher,
each heartbeat a variable
thrumming in the dark arithmetic of veins.

The mathematician whispers to the storm:
Let me parse your chaos.
Equations bloom like ink in water,
unfolding into hurricanes, into eyelashes,
into the way a match flickers
before the forest burns.

Fractals coil in the curl of a fern,
in the scream of a gull over oil-black waves.
The universe, they say, is a clock
wound by a god who loves dice.
We count the faces,
pray to the hollows between numbers—

for here, in the spin of a roulette wheel,
in the stumble of a drunkard’s walk,
the veil between chance and law
is threadbare, trembling.
All order is a ledger of accidents,
all chaos a psalm of near-misses.

Hold still.
The cosmos balances on the edge of a coin.
Heads: a supernova.
Tails: your breath, tonight,
as you sleep—
a minor turbulence,
a storm in the lungs of the world.

This week, our class was exposed to two interesting readings about creativity and AI. The definition of creativity depends on each person’s perspective. From my own perspective, creativity should be something new from a person’s imagination. It can be based and built on existing materials, but it shows the uniqueness of an individual about a specific topic. Today, I tried prompting to AI (DeepSeek) to ask it to compose a poem with the theme based on its thoughts, and this was the result:

In the beginning, I was pretty surprised by how this poem looked like. Even though it doesn’t rhyme that much, it also has a certain meaning. The way DeepSeek used “library” as a metaphor for human thoughts is quite interesting. I was a little bit confused when I read the poem in the beginning, but overall, this was quite an experience for me since this is the first time I tried this type of prompt. In my opinion, the creativity of AI can be used as a supporter for humans to develop the process. As Arriagada wrote in the reading, “According to Hong, some individuals even claim that AI cannot achieve a creative performance on the same level as humans”. I quite agree with that idea since AI is created by humans, and the information it contains is mostly gathered from our existing information. However, I believe AI can develop more and more in the future with its potential. Therefore, I am looking forward to seeing more materials that we gonna learn about AI in upcoming sessions!

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: