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Conflicted Copy
Sam Riviere is a past master of taking and exploiting ‘found’ content and process and transforming it into poetry that captivates and unsettles. Here, he harnesses anxiety about AI only to exploit it for his own extraordinary ends. In this case, Generative Pre-trained Transformer 2 (GPT-2), an open source neural network , is used to produce poems that, stripped of the usual authorial clutter, find themselves nonetheless cohering around a voice that speaks of the uncertainties, fears and desires of a world that is desperately, poignantly and recognisably human.
- GenresPoetry
47 pages, Paperback
Published June 6, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 7, 2024
"Conflicted Copy" by Sam Riviere is a groundbreaking collection that deftly melds the human touch of poetry with the advanced capabilities of artificial intelligence, specifically GPT-2. This innovative collaboration between poet and machine results in a body of work that is both thought-provoking and deeply engaging.
Riviere's decision to use GPT-2 as a co-creator is a bold and visionary move, one that pays off beautifully in the rich, textured verses that populate this collection. The poems oscillate between the familiar and the uncanny, crafting a landscape where traditional poetic forms meet the unexpected turns of AI-generated text. This interplay creates a unique reading experience, as the poems challenge our perceptions of authorship and creativity.
The collection excels in its ability to evoke a wide range of emotions, from the profound to the whimsical. Riviere's skilled editing ensures that each piece maintains coherence and lyrical beauty, even as the AI introduces elements of surprise and novelty. The result is a series of poems that feel both contemporary and timeless, inviting readers to explore the nuances of language and meaning.
"Conflicted Copy" also stands out for its thematic depth. The poems often grapple with concepts of identity, technology, and the nature of human experience in the digital age. Riviere's exploration of these themes through the lens of AI poetry is not only timely but also incredibly insightful, providing readers with a fresh perspective on the ever-evolving relationship between humans and machines.
In addition to its intellectual and emotional appeal, the collection is a testament to Riviere's prowess as a poet. His ability to seamlessly integrate the output of GPT-2 with his own poetic voice is nothing short of remarkable, demonstrating a high level of creativity and technical skill.
Overall, "Conflicted Copy" is a compelling and innovative work that pushes the boundaries of poetry. Sam Riviere's collaboration with GPT-2 results in a collection that is as intriguing as it is beautiful, making it a must-read for anyone interested in the future of literature and the potential of human-machine partnerships.
Riviere's decision to use GPT-2 as a co-creator is a bold and visionary move, one that pays off beautifully in the rich, textured verses that populate this collection. The poems oscillate between the familiar and the uncanny, crafting a landscape where traditional poetic forms meet the unexpected turns of AI-generated text. This interplay creates a unique reading experience, as the poems challenge our perceptions of authorship and creativity.
The collection excels in its ability to evoke a wide range of emotions, from the profound to the whimsical. Riviere's skilled editing ensures that each piece maintains coherence and lyrical beauty, even as the AI introduces elements of surprise and novelty. The result is a series of poems that feel both contemporary and timeless, inviting readers to explore the nuances of language and meaning.
"Conflicted Copy" also stands out for its thematic depth. The poems often grapple with concepts of identity, technology, and the nature of human experience in the digital age. Riviere's exploration of these themes through the lens of AI poetry is not only timely but also incredibly insightful, providing readers with a fresh perspective on the ever-evolving relationship between humans and machines.
In addition to its intellectual and emotional appeal, the collection is a testament to Riviere's prowess as a poet. His ability to seamlessly integrate the output of GPT-2 with his own poetic voice is nothing short of remarkable, demonstrating a high level of creativity and technical skill.
Overall, "Conflicted Copy" is a compelling and innovative work that pushes the boundaries of poetry. Sam Riviere's collaboration with GPT-2 results in a collection that is as intriguing as it is beautiful, making it a must-read for anyone interested in the future of literature and the potential of human-machine partnerships.
July 4, 2025
AS IN RIVIERE'S earlier volume Kim Kardashian's Marriage, all the titles in this collection come from a process of matching all the words in one list (after, darken, dead, old, pink, safe, and true) with all the words in another list (colours, dogs, fame, mode, PDF, poem, and souls), yielding such titles as "Dead Mode" and "Safe Souls."
Absent from this volume, however, are the pairings that had already served as titles for books by Riviere: his novel Dead Souls, his re-working of Martial After Fame, and four of him pamphlets ("True Colours," "Darken PDF," "Old Poem," and "Pink Dogs").
As with his earlier collections, Riviere's method here is to work with material generated by automated digital processes, in this instance GPT-2. All the poems--texts?--were composed in December 2020 and January 2021, thus with software several steps behind what is available now, but they all do have that uncanny AI sheen.
I wonder if AI is getting less useful for poetry as it gets better for prose. That is, the more AI-generated texts achieve the flat neutrality of workaday prose, the less they have the happy surprises and accidents that (once upon a time) gave some digitally-created texts a certain freshness and originality, a saving touch of weirdness.
The poems in Conflicted Copy rarely sound weird. They sound like AI-texts with their wordy constructions, gratuitous modifiers, wobbly qualifications, and superficial clarity occluding a profound vagueness. "I have always been impressed by people who / manage to maintain relationships beyond the / normal bounds of traditional marriage." They sound, that is to say, like a lot of the place-filler text that shows up in packaging, advertising, instructions, junk mail... almost everywhere you look.
As I kept reading, though, there was a poignance, or a melancholy, some ineffable stunted beauty to these poems. Sometimes the sheer baldness of utilitarian prose lends it a kind of grace, as if we can see hidden with it the luminous, memorable prose it was hoping to be. This is the secret of some of Gary Lutz's and George Saunders's stories, I'd say, and of Charles Reznikoff's Testimony, and Karen Degentesh's The Anger Scale.
Whether the poems in Conflicted Copy have this grace because of some tailoring Riviere has done, or because they just happened to have it, I don't know. In fact, it all may be in my own readerly response, my own imagination. But there is something affecting in these poems' very inability to be affecting.
Absent from this volume, however, are the pairings that had already served as titles for books by Riviere: his novel Dead Souls, his re-working of Martial After Fame, and four of him pamphlets ("True Colours," "Darken PDF," "Old Poem," and "Pink Dogs").
As with his earlier collections, Riviere's method here is to work with material generated by automated digital processes, in this instance GPT-2. All the poems--texts?--were composed in December 2020 and January 2021, thus with software several steps behind what is available now, but they all do have that uncanny AI sheen.
I wonder if AI is getting less useful for poetry as it gets better for prose. That is, the more AI-generated texts achieve the flat neutrality of workaday prose, the less they have the happy surprises and accidents that (once upon a time) gave some digitally-created texts a certain freshness and originality, a saving touch of weirdness.
The poems in Conflicted Copy rarely sound weird. They sound like AI-texts with their wordy constructions, gratuitous modifiers, wobbly qualifications, and superficial clarity occluding a profound vagueness. "I have always been impressed by people who / manage to maintain relationships beyond the / normal bounds of traditional marriage." They sound, that is to say, like a lot of the place-filler text that shows up in packaging, advertising, instructions, junk mail... almost everywhere you look.
As I kept reading, though, there was a poignance, or a melancholy, some ineffable stunted beauty to these poems. Sometimes the sheer baldness of utilitarian prose lends it a kind of grace, as if we can see hidden with it the luminous, memorable prose it was hoping to be. This is the secret of some of Gary Lutz's and George Saunders's stories, I'd say, and of Charles Reznikoff's Testimony, and Karen Degentesh's The Anger Scale.
Whether the poems in Conflicted Copy have this grace because of some tailoring Riviere has done, or because they just happened to have it, I don't know. In fact, it all may be in my own readerly response, my own imagination. But there is something affecting in these poems' very inability to be affecting.
April 10, 2025
read this as part of personal research around generative algorithms & artificial intelligence. quite impressed by some of the poems, but it is the vagueness which lets me bridge the gaps that makes them good. thoughts: AI as a medium, AI as a synthesizer, as a blender, an equalizer.
March 29, 2025
Written by AI and curated by Rivière, I’m not sure how I feel about this anthology. It sounds a bit to Neo-Luddite to panic about AI / robots replacing artists and poets one day, but Rivière still manages to introduce a kind of humanity into this work.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews