Li’l Ice AI writes Chinese poetry

[Luxi]

The future is here:

Li’l Ice AI writes Chinese poetry

http://en.people.cn/n3/2017/0531/c90000-9222463.html

http://tech.qq.com/a/20170517/006643.htm

 

A widely quoted sample from Li'l Ice's first book:

Quote

泪痕也模糊得不分明了
我的生命是艺术
有黄昏时西天的浮
用残损的手掌祈求

 

lèihén yě móhú dé bù fēnmíng le
wǒ de shēngmìng shì yìshù
yǒu huánghūn shí xītiān de fúyún
yòng cánsǔn de shǒuzhǎng qíqiú

 

Through the blur of tears, nothing is clear —
My life is art;
Drifting clouds at dusk in the western sky,
With my broken palms I pray.

 

 

 

To me these poems written by Li'l Ice read very much like a lot of modern Chinese poetry, and infinitely better than most modern song lyrics. I don't know enough about all the rules of rhyme, metrics, tonality 等等, 等等 to be able to say this is AI, or to point at any failings. I suspect all the rules have been followed to perfection - maybe that gives away the AI, a human would have at least a few errors. As for 'emotion', many human poems are more descriptive than emotive, and are neither mediocre nor unfeeling.

In fiction, some authors even 'write by numbers', or have teams of ghost-writers working on their next best-selling door-stoppers. Isn't there room for a cute Bot to write the next Ghost Blew the Candle series? Not to mention many essays (especially in politics) that are nothing but strings of copy & paste slogans.

 

Is the Microsoft Asia person who recently posted a survey here still around? I'd like to trade a little used Cortana for one of these Li'l Ice Bots.