Can you spot a ChatGPT-prompted poem?
- ella1525
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
We build where the soil remembers water. [Phrase found in other AI-generated poems]
In the rainy season, the streets of {Lagos} turn to rivers— [The noun: Lagos was probably inserted by the poet.]
whole houses drink until their bones sag,
their skins soaked in the wet breath of the flood.
In Lagos, the rain comes like a memory—
old as the riverbed, filling the air with its song.
Houses drink from the flood, their walls swelling,
soft as clay that remembers the hands that shaped it. [Weak, cliched simile, found in Large Language Models /LLMs like ChatGPT.]
Each year, the flood sweeps in, not as a conqueror but as a visitor, [Parallel construction: not his but that]
its waterline traced in mud, in stories passed down like inherited land. [Its + Its – LLMs favour this phrase: It’s not this…it’s that]
Even the walls grow soft as if remembering their origin in the earth,
as if they want to return to the clay they were shaped from, [The phrases soft and the clay are used more than once by a LLM trying to rewrite a sentence /line while trying hard not to repeat the same words.]
to sleep once more in the belly of the land. [Probably written by poet]
Roof beams tilt in prayer to the sky, the walls softened by silt, [Nonsensical phrasing; soft is repeated as a participle adjective]
as if waiting for the river to speak again,
to leave behind not ruin but the promise of fertile soil, [Parallel construction: not this but that] & maybe green shoots.
But the flood leaves its taste behind, in the corners, in the cracks. [Phrase found in other AI-generated poems]
We live on with it in our lungs, learning to swim in the dust
until the rains come again.
We live inside this thirst. The water knows every crack, [Phrase found in other AI-generated poems]
seeping into the bones of our homes,
turning them soft, pliant. The roof sags, the walls bend [Listing of adjectives and repeating soft again]
like knees in prayer— a kind of surrender. [Em-dash overuse]
We walk between houses that lean into silence, [Nonsensical phrasing]
their ribs fragile, yet holding on— just like us, holding on.
Results: GPTZero AI Detection
Model 2026-03-11-base
We are highly confident this text was AI generated
Please see below a poem generated by ChatGPT from the prompt: Write a free verse poem on the topic floods or heavy rain.
The sky breaks, a heavy, grey promise falling upon the swamp. [Two adjectives preceding noun]Lagos, city of twenty million,holds its breath, then surrenders.Water—not a river, but a sudden, angry sea,rising to meet the horizon in the middle of the expressway.
Plastic bottles, old slippers, and broken dreamsfloat in the brown, murky tide,sailing down the middle of the street.Yellow buses, danfos, transform into ships,engines coughing, struggling against the currentthat swallows the potholes whole.
The air is thick, metallic, smelling of wet earth and debris.In the narrow alleys of Ajegunle,in the modern quiet of Lekki,the water cares not for address.It creeps under doors,a silent, relentless guest,forcing children onto tabletops and lifting mattresses to float.
"No go area" becomes a promise kept.Work stops.The market is a sea of submerged wares,tomatoes floating alongside synthetic hair,traders lifting their hands to the sky,a silent ooh in the face of the rain.
Yet, the city does not break.Strangers join hands in the deluge,pushing a stuck car in the murky deep,laughter rising above the thunder,a collective survival,until the sun returns to bake the mud,and we wait,once more,for the sky to break again.
As evidenced, it's becoming increasingly harder for editors like myself to detect AI.
What are the Features of AI-generated Poetry?
AI-poems are over polished. You may see perfect stanza lengths and evidence of perfect writing skills.
Lines may have perfect symmetry
AI-poetry lacks nuance or subtle changes in tone and meaning An poem written by a machine doesn't give other perspectives. The concluding lines are quite generic and direct.
One can sometimes identify robotic transitions between sentences and stanzas.
An AI-generated poem is an over-structured piece: too many similes, adjectives, et cetera. Some lines are a rephrasing of previous lines. Metaphors may be off or strange.
No-one POV is brought to the forward. Where's the eccentric or homourous voice?
AI-poems lacks elements of creativity that may be present in human writing.
AI-poems do not vary their style. Have you ever seen an AI-prose poem?
The following poem was submmitted by a contestant in the 2025 Annual Bridgette James Poetry Competition.
How long did it take you to guess it was written by Chat GPT?
Roots in the Rain (AI sounding title)
I walk where rivers bleed into the sky,
Port Harcourt’s heart beats beneath my feet.
The earth knows me deeper than my name. (Nonsensical imagery)
Barefoot, I feel the pulse of moss,
Cool and ancient, cradling each step. (Attributing three qualities)
In the mangroves’ quiet hum,
I hear your name on the wind. (in)
Are you the shadow flitting through trees,
Or the steady flow of water over stone?
I search for you in swaying branches,
Each leaf a breath, each ripple your trace. (Each this...each that)
You are not flesh, but spirit, (Negative parallelism)
Woven in the forest’s endless weave,
Alive in the rain that falls.
The Niger’s arms stretch wide,
Its waters carrying my dreams afar.
In silence, I call to you, (Nonsensical imagery)
And the river answers with laughter.
A hawk’s cry slices the clouds,
Sharp as the ache of your absence. (Sharp is a word LLMs overuse)
But you are here,
Not in things I can touch,
But in the rhythm of this land,
Slipping through my fingers like rain.
An oak stands tall,
Its roots tangled in the soil of my birth.
The rain falls, steady, unrelenting, (According to search engines, rain rarely just "falls" in AI poetry; it almost always "does something else.)
And in it, I find you again,
In the earth’s sigh, in birds taking flight at dawn.
I am not separate from this,
Not from rivers, trees, or rain,
Nor from laughter in Port Harcourt’s streets.
In each pulse, I hear you,
A rhythm in the veins of the earth,
A song in the wind’s rustle, woven into the rain, The earth and you. (Group of threes)
Every thing in this Ai-poem does too much. My head spun, reading it.
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