My friend's AI tried to write a poem about a toaster and it got weird

I was over at my buddy's place in Austin last weekend, and he showed me this new text generator he's been playing with. He typed in 'write a short poem about a toaster' as a joke. The thing came back with a four-line verse about 'the warm, metallic womb' and 'the electric kiss of resurrection.' We just stared at the screen for a solid minute. It was so oddly specific and dramatic for such a simple kitchen gadget. It made me think about how these models sometimes find these strange, poetic connections in data that a person would never make. The takeaway for me was less about the tech being smart and more about it being creatively unpredictable in ways that are just plain funny. Has anyone else had an AI spit out something unexpectedly profound over a totally silly prompt?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_sean19d ago

Honestly that just sounds like a normal poem to me.

christopher_wilson19d ago

My old poetry professor would call that a textbook example of free verse.