The following sequence charts the process to the above ‘erasure’ from ChatGPT, or Al as I like to call my old acquintance (there is quite a bit about this relationship here in the blog: https://gravyfromthegazebo.blog/?s=ChatGPT&submit=Search).

In getting Al to produce an erasure was easier than it has been to get it to write a poem that doesn’t rhyme, or to emulate named, famous poets! However, as ever, there are impediments to the production of apt responses…

I’ll let the sequence speak for itself, mostly. Two specific points to make: I love Al’s inability to pull a known Mike Ferguson poem from its massive database (!); the final image of an erasure that Al does create really isn’t quite right, but it is rather special. The errors/accidents are themselves poetic gems and as such the absolute essence of found poetry: the initial ‘example’ of an image of an erasure is at best a visual representation, and even this is a meaningless one – for example, the ‘rest of the text’ isn’t obscured, as stated; the final image/text (itself a fascinating concoction) is not an erasure/not a black-out, with the ‘black’ selections mainly bits of words or just letters; the blue colour in the text is a wonderful Artificial Intelligence oblique interpretation of erasure from the source poem, and other peculiarities.

Here is the sequence as it happened yesterday: