Poetic Value after Generative AI: Authorship, Creativity, and the Lyric in the Age of ChatGPT

Abstract

The rapid integration of generative artificial intelligence into creative domains reshapes literary production, particularly poetry, as tools such as ChatGPT increasingly participate in lyric composition and challenge established notions of authorship, originality, and aesthetic value. Consequently, debates over whether poetic meaning arises from human intentionality or algorithmic patterning intensify within contemporary literary and cultural studies. In this context, the present study examines how generative AI influences perceptions of authorship and creative authority in poetry and, moreover, analyzes how AI-assisted composition affects the aesthetic evaluation of the lyric in comparison with human-authored and human–AI collaborative texts. To achieve these objectives, a mixed-methods research design was employed, integrating semi-structured interviews with university students, poets, and literary scholars, survey questionnaires assessing evaluative judgments of poems under concealed and revealed authorship conditions, and textual analysis of AI-generated and collaborative poems. Furthermore, data were analyzed using thematic coding and descriptive statistical techniques to ensure methodological rigor and triangulation. The findings indicated that AI-generated poetry was frequently perceived as formally coherent and linguistically sophisticated; however, it was often regarded as lacking intentional depth and emotional authenticity once AI authorship was disclosed. Moreover, poems produced through human–AI collaboration have a tendency to to receive higher aesthetic evaluations than purely AI-generated texts, suggesting that perceived poetic value increased when human agency remained visible. Besides this, participants’ judgments were strongly shaped by prior beliefs about creativity and authorship. Overall, the study has demonstrated that generative AI does not diminish poetic value but rather reconfigures it by shifting emphasis from solitary authorship to distributed creativity. Accordingly, the findings have contributed to ongoing debates in literary studies and have underscored the need for critical AI literacy within literary scholarship and education.

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