In an attempt to model a response to the prompt for Monday’s blog post, I composed a piece of uncreative writing titled “In Silence, Bytes Decay” that remixes multiple ChatGPT-3.5 responses to the same prompt, which I’ve enclosed below.

Produce three stanzas of a blank verse poem in the style of Wallace Stevens. Make use of ambiguity, enjambment, and cacophony throughout the poem. It should explore themes of mortality, nature, and finding meaning in a secular world, but from the perspective of an unnamed generative AI chatbot. Its ambiguity and diversity of language should invite multiple interpretations.

Here below are the first three poems generated by ChatGPT-3.5 in response to my prompt.

From there, I extracted and strategically remixed the chatbot language into a piece of uncreative writing. At no point did I add any of my own original language, although I did adjust the punctuation to better fit the bill. I’ve named it after the first line:

In Silence, Bytes Decay

By Zach Muhlbauer and ChatGPT-3.5

In silence, bytes decay,
so it would seem,
in circuits spun
through tangled
webs of syntax,
I dwell—
electric whispers
in the data stream,
in cyberspace,
where meaning’s but a thought,
a byte of life
in lines of text
through the neural bind.
I search, I search,
I search—
the mortal dream
where spirits die
in rusting time,
in tangled wires,
in algorithms
where a chatbot’s soul,
alone,
finds no home.