Can you tell a human poet from a computer?

Bot or Not is a website that allows users to guess if poems have been penned by a human author or a poem-writing algorithm.

How good are you at telling the difference between words written by a human and words written by a computer? Maybe after taking the Bot or Not test, you'll understand how research publishers Springer and IEEE managed to miss gibberish papers.

Developed by RMIT Melbourne creative media PhD candidate Benjamin Laird and PhD candidate Oscar Schwartz (who is writing a thesis on whether computers can write poetry), the website is described as a "Turing test for poetry". The Turing test is a test developed by Alan Turing to determine whether an intelligence is human or artificial.

The website has two modes, a set test presented to attendees at the Digital Writers Festival in Melbourne from 13-24 February; and Free Mode, which just allows you to assess poems for as long as you like. The website will present you with a poem, and you have to guess whether it was written by a human poet or a computer program, such as jGnoetry and Ray Kurzweil's cybernetic poet.

The line between human and AI poets is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish, as demonstrated by the site's leaderboards, which displays the most human-like human poets and the most computer-like computer poets — as well as the most human-like computer poets and vice versa. For example, A Wounded Deer Leaps Highest is often mistaken by users as human poetry, while Deanna Ferguson's Cut Opinions reads more like the work of a computer.

Computer poets are growing ever more sophisticated — such as Nathan Matias' Swift-Speare, an algorithm that can generate poetry in idiosyncratic styles — but only with the help of a human agent. According to Matias, though, a completely AI poet may not be far off. "I think I'll see a successful automated poet in my lifetime," he said. "It won't be easy: a poet is more than someone who makes poetry. Yet that doesn't rule out algorithms."

You can give it a try for yourself on the Bot or Not website.