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Kurzweil Gets A Patent For Poetic Software

Posted by timothy on from the rhymin'-and-stealin' dept.

theodp writes "Ray Kurzweil, inventor of the Kurzweil Reading Machine for the blind, has developed what he calls a cybernetic poet, software that allows a computer to create poetry by imitating but not plagiarizing the styles and vocabularies of human poets. A sample: 'Sashay down the page...through the lioness...nestled in my soul.' Impressed? The USPTO, who sponsored the Independent Inventors Conference Mr. Kurzweil spoke at on Nov. 17, seems to be. On Nov. 11, Ray Kurzweil received U.S. Patent No. 6,647,395 for Poet Personalities."

2 of 242 comments (clear)

  1. Link to program by benna · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here is a link to the site where you can download this program.

    --
    "It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
  2. Re:Not convincing by belmolis · · Score: 5, Informative
    None of the haikus under the "More Poetry" link have the correct number of syllables.

    Properly speaking, that is, in Japanese, haiku are not specified in terms of syllables. They're specified in terms of moras (Japanese onsetsu), the things of which a light syllable has one and a heavy syllable has two (or occasionally three). For example, here's a well known classic haiku:

    na ra na na e
    shi chi doo ga ran
    ya e za ku ra

    I've broken it down into syllables. As you can see, there are five in each line. The reason this is well-formed is that the syllable doo counts as two moras since it has a long vowel and the syllable ran counts as two moras since it has a closing consonant. So the second line contains seven moras even though it only contains five syllables. In sum, a haiku is a poem whose lines contain 5, 7, and 5 moras. How this should translate into English I don't know. Personally, I think English "haiku" sound funny and favor sticking to Japanese.