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It is striking how often poetry is referenced in media reports about large language models (LLMs) and in the marketing language of technology companies like OpenAI (‘it can even write poetry!’). These references have a clear rhetorical effect: they contribute to the anthropomorphization of these technologies. This article takes a close look at the poetic production of LLMs (such as ChatGPT), showing that AI poetry relies on a romantic poetics that places expression and subjectivity at its core. I contrast the romantic conception of LLM poetry with experimental and avant-garde poetry of the twentieth century, in which procedures and machines were used to counteract notions of expression. I investigate the similarities and differences between twentieth-century computer poetry and the poetry of LLMs, and argue that it is important to read contemporary computer poetry in relation to the nature and function of digital media in our postdigital era.
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