{"id":666115,"date":"2026-10-26T20:02:29","date_gmt":"2026-10-26T20:02:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/666115\/"},"modified":"2026-10-26T20:02:29","modified_gmt":"2026-10-26T20:02:29","slug":"twelve-year-old-wins-australian-slam-competition-prize-with-poem-about-chatgpt-its-totally-unnecessary-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/666115\/","title":{"rendered":"Twelve-year-old wins Australian slam competition prize with poem about ChatGPT: \u2018It\u2019s totally unnecessary\u2019 | Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

Loneliness, brain rot and early exposure to porn. Twelve-year-old Blake Mackenzie has summed up many of the horrors of growing up in the age of AI in a 90-second poem called Dear ChatGPT, making him the standout winner of this year\u2019s youth prize at the 2026 Australian Poetry<\/a> Slam competition.<\/p>\n

The year six student from Newcastle won over the 10 judges at the Sydney Opera House on Sunday night with smart and succinct lines, such as \u201cYou\u2019re designed to addict us and never contradict us\u201d and \u201cYour friendship is endless so why do I feel friendless?\u201d.<\/p>\n

The judges, who were randomly selected from the audience, might have been even more impressed to hear Blake wrote the poem only the day before.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was making them as I went through [the competition],\u201d he told Guardian Australia on Monday. \u201cI just kept winning and it was all because I wrote a cool poem in class one day.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Australian Poetry Slam competition is now in its 22nd year. It ran 65 heats in 60 towns and cities across the country to find 16 finalists.<\/p>\n

As the youth winner, Blake shares a prize package worth $20,000 with Alice Springs poet Bivor, who won the adult category for his poem Politics is Doing You.<\/p>\n

Both poets will spend the coming year representing at writing and poetry festivals \u2013 Blake in Australia and Bivor in Indonesia and Singapore.<\/p>\n

Bivor won the adult category at the Australian Poetry Slam competition for Politics is Doing You. Photograph: Nicola Bailey<\/p>\n

Blake entered the competition on the encouragement of his teacher, Mrs Welsh. She came to both his first heat performance and the state final in the lead up to Sunday night\u2019s grand final.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe got a T-shirt that says \u2018I\u2019m Blake\u2019s teacher\u2019. I wouldn\u2019t be here without her telling me to enter this, assuring me that I was a good poet. She\u2019s been a really big part of this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dear ChatGPT was inspired by how Blake\u2019s friends use chatbots and AI generally, and in a really needless way, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead of reading the book we\u2019re learning in class, they get ChatGPT to summarise each chapter \u2013 and by the time you\u2019ve read the summary you could have read the chapter. It\u2019s such a waste of water,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe more we use it, the more power we give it,\u201d Blake said. \u201cMore water will be wasted. It\u2019s totally unnecessary.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sydney Water has said as much as 250 megalitres of water would be needed each day<\/a> to service datacentres in Sydney alone by 2035 \u2013 a volume larger than Canberra\u2019s total drinking water. \u201cThat\u2019s eventually so much water that could be given to people who have none,\u201d Blake said.<\/p>\n

The 12-year-old did not use AI to help him write the poem \u2013 \u201cNo, that\u2019s very not allowed,\u201d he said \u2013 and he avoids using chatbots generally.<\/p>\n

Though he does not know any other kids his age who enjoy spoken word poetry, he thinks it a good way to raise some of the issues he is passionate about. \u201cI try to talk about things that affect people my age,\u201d he said. \u201cI feel really proud of it. I could not be more happy with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blake\u2019s first poem of the night, which got him into the final, was called I Love My Country \u2013 \u201cabout Australia and all its inequalities and racism,\u201d he said. In the poem, he decried the divisiveness of political parties, such as One Nation, and the fact that Australia was built on stolen land. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to love your country if you don\u2019t feel welcome in your own country,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cLiterally every single person\u2019s poem was on a whole different level. They were so good,\u201d said Blake. \u201cOne of the judges came up to me and said \u2018I didn\u2019t vote for you just because you\u2019re a kid. I did it because your poem was amazing.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Loneliness, brain rot and early exposure to porn. Twelve-year-old Blake Mackenzie has summed up many of the horrors…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":666116,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,61,60,80],"class_list":["post-666115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=666115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/666116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}