Opening academic year Faculty of Arts 2023: Arts Lecture by Ellen Deckwitz
Traditionally, the Faculty of Arts opens the academic year with the Arts Lecture. This year's 36th edition took place on Tuesday, 5 September in the Aula of the Academy Building. The lecture was delivered by poet and writer Ellen Deckwitz and was titled ChatGPT: the poet is dead, long live the poet!
ChatGPT: the poet is dead, long live the poet
What does the introduction of ChatGPT mean for the world of the Arts? Previously, writers were responsible for creating all kinds of literary works, but now AI models — such as ChatGPT — can largely take over this process. They can generate prose, fiction, essays, and even poems that seem convincing and human-made at first glance.
The development of ChatGPT marks an important turning point in literature and raises questions about originality, creativity, and artistic value. If algorithms can write poems, what good are poets to us? And is poetry, the ultimate expression of the singleton, still valuable if it is no longer created by a human being?
Ellen Deckwitz (1982) is a poet and writer. She studied Dutch language at our faculty and has been unstoppable since she made her entrance into the Arts: in recent years prize-winning collections have appeared (including De steen vreest mij (The stone fears me), C. Buddingh-prijs 2012), books about writing (the widely acclaimed Zo wordt je een geweldige dichter (This is how you become a great poet)) and the bestseller Olijven moet je leren lezen (Learning to read olives). In 2021, Ellen Deckwitz won The Johnny, the oeuvre prize for performing poetry.
She also regularly presents poetry slams, won countless herself, made the finals of De slimste mens, travels the world to discover new poetry, makes theater, and also writes weekly columns in both NRC Handelsblad and De Morgen.
More information
For more information and/or questions, please contact the Department of Communication & Marketing, Faculty of Arts, University of Groningen.
| Last modified: | 09 November 2023 10.00 a.m. |