An AI-penned poem about the joy of nudity
“Irony is just honesty with the volume cranked up.” – George Saunders
As advanced as artificial intelligence has become, and as shockingly advanced as it soon will be, there is one thing it cannot ever truly experience: the feeling of being naked in one's own skin. This poem, written and titled by the AI chat algorithm ChatGPT, attempts to capture the essence of what it means to embrace one's unadorned corporal form, and the freedom that comes along with it. Does it succeed? What do you think?
“Emancipation from the Layers”
The skin, a canvas, waiting to be set free
From constricting clothes, a prison of society
To shed the layers, to bare it all
Is to embrace the primal, to stand tall
Nudity, a freedom, a wild delight
To feel the air, to bask in the light
No longer bound by fabric, no longer confined
But free to roam, to let the body shine
It is a joy, a liberation, a bliss
To shed the masks, to be true to this
To embrace the naked, to revel in the bare
Is to honor the self, to be truly aware
So let us shed our clothes, let us shed our shame
And embrace the naked, with joy and with flame
For in our bodies, in all their raw form
We find true freedom, we weather the storm 🪐
I suppose it was just a matter of time. But dang this makes me so uncomfortable. The poem makes sense, the meter and rhyme work for the most part… and yet, you’re right, an AI could never understand what nudity feels like. Wherefore humanity…?!?!
My understanding of how this stuff works is that the software "reads" a bunch of what it's supposed to do, and imitates it. (Mary Catherine Bateson said that ghosts can't do anything that the living person never did.) So, the digital author of this poem did a pretty good job, working in a genre that hasn't found its Shakespeare yet. The picture of the naked man is pretty awful.