ChatGPT for Christmas poem?

This article was last updated on December 5, 2024

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ChatGPT for Christmas poem? This is increasingly being succumbed to

“Sinterklaas was thinking about what he would give you.” It is the starting rule for anyone who finds writing a Sinterklaas poem terrible, but cannot avoid the annual doggerel. For anyone with Sinterklaas stress, there are now also chatbots with artificial intelligence (AI) that can lend a helping hand.

More and more people are using this, sees AI specialist Lars van Gils of the company PromptGorillas. “During training, I often jokingly ask whether people have ever used a chatbot for their Sinterklaas poem. Then half of the hands go up.”

Only: does the use of AI fit in with the Sinterklaas celebration? Opinions are divided on this. “Part of the charm of a Sinterklaas poem also lies in its personal character, and that it may be written a bit clumsily,” says Michael Janus of the website Mick’s Rhyme Dictionary. Poet and cultural historian Jan de Bas believes that a chatbot is “quite at odds with original creativity”.

But according to Van Gils you can easily create a personal poem with ChatGPT, for example. “As long as you give good assignments.”

Old tradition

It is not entirely clear exactly when the tradition of writing poetry with Sinterklaas originated, says cultural historian De Bas, who conducted research into the Sinterklaas celebration. What is certain is that the poems became more popular from the beginning of the 20th century.

“Poetry writing peaked in the 1950s and 1960s,” he says. “That period is in any case seen as the highlight of the Sinterklaas celebration.”

From the 1960s onwards the party slowly became smaller. “Then Santa Claus came along, through commerce.” Yet, more than half a century later, Sinterklaas still exists. With poems.

Many elements

According to De Bas, a good Sinterklaas poem is “personal, original in terms of imagery, and it has a good rhythm”. What he also thinks works well: “humor, irony, perspective, contradiction, repetition, or a list with tension from smallest to largest”. And many Sinterklaas poems rhyme, of course.

Quite a challenge, also for a chatbot. According to AI specialist Van Gils, it is best to give an assignment with different elements. First of all, you need to give the chatbot a clear role. “For Sinterklaas poems, therefore, those of the poet.”

It is then important to provide the chatbot with as much information as possible: who is the poem for, what is your relationship to that person, what hobbies does that person have, and in what rhyme scheme should the poem be written?

“Then there is the tone of voice,” says Van Gils. “Should it be sweet, or sarcastic?” The structure also matters: “How many sentences do you want, and how long should they be?” According to Van Gils, it also helps to give the chatbot examples, for example Sinterklaas poems that you have made previously.

‘Buy a gift’

Since last week, the PromptGorillas website has had a chatbot for Sinterklaas poems, which has already included all these types of questions. “In just a few days it was used 80,000 times,” says Van Gils.

Since this year, the Mick’s Rhyming Dictionary website also has a chatbot that uses ChatGPT and a number of algorithms from the rhyming dictionary. Owner Janus believes it is a good idea to write a poem with a few tools, such as a rhyming dictionary or a chatbot. But according to him, outsourcing your poem completely to a chatbot is “a bit like having someone else buy a gift for your wife.”

It also depends a bit on the situation, Janus thinks. If you have to write a poem for many colleagues, he believes a chatbot is a solution. “In a family setting you may be more likely to opt for a self-written poem.” Poet De Bas agrees with this: “If you want to write a personal poem for your sister-in-law, it is best to draw on your own experiences.”

Van Gils sees chatbots as “a source of inspiration and a tool that you can put your own spin on”. That used to happen, he says: “People took Sinterklaas poems off the internet and started changing them. So has a lot changed?”