Since it’s computer generated, it’s not a story about someone’s experience. It’s not a communique from one human to another. I thought it was like tap dancing on the keyboard of the human mind, and when the computer lands an evocative line, which we thought this was, it has something to say about ourselves.
My hope with computer generated poetry is that we might be able to use it know ourselves better.
A landscape can be breathtakingly beautiful. It doesn’t matter that it wasn’t created specifically to invoke that feeling - just that the forces of nature conspired to create something so exquisite is enough.
Maybe the same goes for computerized creativity. Pieces of beauty found among the landscape of possible things it can emit are like natural wonders, rather than works of art.
To me this is no different conceptually as 'seeing' a face in the grill of a car or the front of a building. A sort of mental version of 'Pareidolia'.
In which case no AI-generated poem (prior to actual GAI) can properly be called a poem, since it isn't generated out of a feeling.
On the other hand:
If a human, who is feeling something, but is unable to summon the words to express that feeling, prompts an ML program to help them generate some words that they think communicate that feeling - then shares that with an audience and successfully communicate that way...
who's to say that's not poetry?