Full Title: Reimagining Authorship: AI, Translation Tools and Speculative Poetry in Contemporary Chinese Poetry

Abstract: This research examines how the imagination and application of technological agents —ranging from imaginary robots, translation software AI models —challenge traditional conception of authorship through reshaping subjectivity in poetry. Focusing on contemporary Chinese poetry as example, it argues that technological agents introduce a polyphonic structure semantically and syntactically across different types of human-machine interactions, which brings the emergence of the notion of “algorithmic authorship”.

It gives textual analysis of cases in a spectrum of human-technology literature, including Lin Yao-de(林耀德) and Tang Juan’s(唐捐) imagination of “the voice of machine”, the application of translation tools in Hsia Yu’s(夏宇) poems “Pink Noise” (粉紅色噪音), and Microsoft AI “xiaobing’s” creation of a female “personality” via LSTM model. At the first stage, poets imagine “robots’ subjectivity” by the techniques of concrete poetry to imitate non-human language and behavior, which forms an intersubjective dialogue through semantic descriptions. However, when technologies are involved in poem writing, author’s intention intertwined with algorithms is presented in a hybrid text, where readers can only picture author’s “subjectivity” between text and its algorithms through the peculiarity of syntactics and semantics rather than only following the text. The change of hermeneutics in this spectrum reveals how technology as an another “unknown author” shapes subjectivity correspondingly within and outside the text.

By analyzing the cases from non-AI to AI-assisted text, this research emphasizes how different technological agents significantly change readers’ hermeneutic methods, rather than focusing on AI-generated text itself only. By shifting attention from textual outputs to the transformations of authorship, the study challenges technocentric views and calls for greater attention to the formation of technological epistemology.