Emotional reactions<\/p>\n
Our study set out to explore students\u2019 responses to AI-generated poems. We especially wanted to know if AI poetry could produce the same feelings of emotional connection and growth that have long been associated with reading literature<\/a>.<\/p>\n Researchers have found that both lay<\/a> and professional<\/a> readers of literature prefer AI-generated texts to human ones, and the majority of readers are unable to reliably distinguish between them<\/a>.<\/p>\n A recent New York Times quiz<\/a> confirmed these findings: more than 50%<\/a> of the 86,000+ quiz-takers preferred the AI texts. <\/p>\n And yet, as the newspaper\u2019s technology columnist Kevin Roose reported in a recent podcast<\/a>, many quiz-takers were upset when informed of this. So were the students in our experiment.<\/p>\n What do these emotional reactions suggest is at stake when we read AI-generated Dickinson\u2019s poetry is beloved for its emotional resonance; she has been Would AI versions of her poetry have the same effect?<\/p>\n Emily Dickinson c.1848. To investigate this question, we used GPT4o to produce new versions of Students were invited to read and comment on one of two original poems and the Students knew that only one of the poems would be \u201creal\u201d, but we revealed which one it was only at the end of the interviews.<\/p>\n An unpredictable arc<\/p>\n The AI-generated versions of the meadow-bee poem consistently offered a fluent and logical story of the bee as the image of a free and authentic self, released into nature. Dickinson\u2019s original poem has a far more unpredictable arc. It gives us a picture of a fractured and ironic psychological state.<\/p>\n In Dickinson\u2019s poem, the flitting bee is free to follow its \u201cindefinite\u201d whims and \u201cflirt all day with buttercups\u201d. The speaker likewise desires to<\/p>\n marry whom I may, But this desire quickly unravels into darker territory. She declares that she would rather flee from moral authorities (\u201cOr better, run away \/ With no police to follow\u201d) than enjoy the limited freedoms of conventional courtship, even to the point of desperate measures: <\/p>\n Till I should jump peninsulas The final stanza performs a brilliant and surprising return to the opening motif. As if waking from a reverie, Dickinson restates the bee theme:<\/p>\n I said, but just to be a bee The poem\u2019s wild ride isn\u2019t done with us yet. In the final two lines, the speaker and the reader realise that her psychological situation is in fact a prison:<\/p>\n What liberty! So captives deem Disappointment and betrayal<\/p>\n Read alongside the soothing lines of the AI version, Dickinson\u2019s original may sound fervent, harsh or depressing. What would readers think of the differences between them?<\/p>\n Neither we nor the students were prepared for what we found. Not only were seven What\u2019s more, they described intensely positive feelings in response to the AI poems.<\/p>\n Students were suspicious of Dickinson\u2019s liberal use of em-dashes (a hallmark of In their view, Dickinson\u2019s poem lacked the flowing, immersive, emotionally engaging and enjoyable qualities they associated with human-written poetry.<\/p>\n Conversely, they responded strongly to the emotional and aesthetic qualities of the One student found the AI-generated nature imagery \u201cvery peaceful [\u2026] as I feel when I have been out in nature\u201d. Several students intuited the presence of lived emotion in the AI poems: \u201cwhen you are reading the imagery, you feel like there is a feeling to it, I suppose\u201d.<\/p>\n The same students described experiencing disappointment, alarm, fear and even betrayal when we revealed the original poem.<\/p>\n Moreover, knowing that a poem was written by AI produced an immediate emotional distance from the text. One student explained,\u201cyou\u2019re not going to have that connection [\u2026] you\u2019re seeking that connection with the human being\u201d.<\/p>\n Another student said that the poem they thought was AI-generated felt \u201clike a Novelist James Baldwin argued literature connects us with others. A shared connection<\/p>\n At a time when AI-generated texts can pass for human writing, it feels critical to We know that reading literature can help us to work though difficult emotions<\/a>. The speakers of Dickinson\u2019s poems are often grappling with intense states of mind and divided or thwarted feelings. As such, they can accompany us in recognising and understanding our own emotions.<\/p>\n Literature can even shift us into new ways of thinking and feeling<\/a> through the internal dialogue we enter into with a text and its characters. As literature scholar Annette Federico points out<\/a>, \u201cliterary reading is still fundamentally relational, or intersubjective: a self-to-other, self-to-world, and even self-to-self experience\u201d. <\/p>\n Crucially, it can help us feel a little less alone<\/a>. As novelist James Baldwin said<\/a>:<\/p>\n You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of Our research suggests that literature\u2019s recuperative effect is amplified when reading together<\/a>. When we share the reading experience, literature becomes<\/a> \u201ca springboard for broader reflections on life and personal experience\u201d.<\/p>\n Valuing the surprise and idiosyncrasy of human writing, with its genuine interiority<\/a>, may be the key here. Generative AI now offers production-line quality in writing across a wide range of genres<\/a>. But the price may be losing our connection to each other\u2019s human experience and emotion through our words.<\/p>\n We will give the final word to one of our students:<\/p>\n poetry is, at its core, an expressive form of art that relies on emotion and [\u2026] human experiences and the imperfections that come with being human [\u2026] I just don\u2019t feel that great about technology trying to replicate that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Could I but ride indefiniteAs doth the meadow-beeAnd visit only where I liked,And no man visit me, I\u2019d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414294,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,85,46,125],"class_list":["post-414293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nwriting? The results of our study may offer some clues. <\/p>\n
\ndescribed<\/a> as \u201csomeone with whom people have a very personal relationship\u201d.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/file-20260401-57-1s7epy.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/p>\n
\nDickinson poems that are available in the public domain<\/a>. Prompting the model to reuse the first stanza, we asked it to complete each poem three times, closely mimicking Dickinson\u2019s signature tone and style.<\/p>\n
\nthree AI renderings. In surveys and interviews undertaken immediately after, we
\nasked each student about their impressions and their preferences. <\/p>\n
And dwell a little everywhere.<\/p>\n
To get away from you.<\/p>\n
Upon a raft of air,
And row in nowhere all day long.<\/p>\n
Who tight in dungeons are.<\/p>\n
\nout of eight students unable to tell the real Dickinson poems apart from the AI-generated versions, but they confidently rejected the original poem as \u201cdefinitely\u201d AI-generated.<\/p>\n
\nGPT writing). They dismissed her unusual or disjunctive imagery as \u201cstilted\u201d and
\n\u201cdistinctly unevocative and jarring\u201d. <\/p>\n
\nAI poems, describing them as \u201cvery soothing\u201d, \u201cflowing\u201d, \u201cserene\u201d, \u201ccalming\u201d and
\n\u201crelatable\u201d. The AI poems moved them, connected with their memories, and
\nmotivated them to experience nature.<\/p>\n
\ncomputer in my heart\u201d.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/file-20260401-57-nfliv6.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n Allan Warren, via Wikimedia Commons.<\/a>, CC BY-SA<\/a><\/p>\n
\nunderstand why the connection with human experience and emotions through
\nliterature continues to matter so much to us \u2013 and what we can do to preserve that
\nconnection.<\/p>\n
\nthe world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that
\ntormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the
\npeople who were alive, who had ever been alive.<\/p>\n