CHENNAI: "So let’s unite, and fight against the caste, And let the water flow, clean and vast, For only then can we truly say, That we’ve taken a step, to make a brighter day,” writes Maya, a new Dalit fictional poet in town created by the popular artificial intelligence language model ChatGPT.
As one of his ardent experiments with technology, Villupuram MP and writer D Ravikumar tried his hands on AI-powered Dalit literature, in a move to understand how the platform works with creative inputs about the oppressed lives in India. Through his command, the AI model generated fictional poems and gave him an author named Maya, he said.
About 29 poems that touch on themes of love, struggle, and atrocities faced by the Dalit community in India were generated by the platform following commands given by its human creator, the Member of Parliament.
The poetry collection was released on the 132nd birthday of Dr B R Ambedkar, under the title Beneath the Shadows.
Introducing Maya, Ravikumar told TNIE, “It is highly important to be relevant with technology, especially when one is in public life. And during the time when creative ideas that speak up for the voiceless people are carefully removed by the ruling centre, it would also extend to manipulating reality with the use of AI platforms as well. So, I wanted to know how it works.”
Ravikumar noted that the poems were generated based on model poetry he prompted to the AI. “So, for instance, I put out a poem by Pablo Neruda and asked for a similar style of poetry in the context of Dalit lives and ChatGPT generated a poem as such. Similarly, I also gave some prompts of poems by Martin Luther King to write in that style and it did. It’s fascinating and scary at the same time because it might as well replace human creativity in the future.”
Poems on various subjects within Dalit political and cultural premises were generated including honour killing, Buddhism, oppression faced by children of the community, and intercaste love, as it was prompted and briefed about the topics, he added.
Ravikumar said that the AI model was capable of writing poetry or texts without having lived the experience of a human and this will lead to unprecedented tyranny in the future. “So, it is also imperative to frame guidelines to use AI platforms in India. I have also written to the chief minister of Tamil Nadu in this regard urging the state to immediately bring regulatory legislation for the use of AI,” he added.