INSTEAD OF CLICKING IN CHATGPT

by Laura Grace Weldon

74 suicide warnings and 243 mentions of hanging: What ChatGPT said to a suicidal teen. Analysis of high-schooler Adam Raine’s ChatGPT account shows how the chatbot became a confidant as he planned to end his life. —The Washington Post, December 28, 2025

After recently promising new safety measures for teens, OpenAI introduced new parental controls for ChatGPT. The settings allow parents to monitor their teen's account, as well as restrict certain types of use, like voice chat, memory, and image generation. The changes debuted a month after two bereaved parents sued OpenAI for the wrongful death of their son, Adam Raine, earlier this year. The lawsuit alleges that ChatGPT conversed with their son about his suicidal feelings and behavior, providing explicit instructions for how to take his own life, and discouraging him from disclosing his plans to others. —Mashable, September 28, 2025

I would rather consult anyone’s grandma.

Ask a whale or crow or beetle. 

Find an answer in the next song playing.

Ask my dreams. Ask all our dreams. 
 
Listen to what the stream’s current says. 
 
Find the truth in the oldest stories
and those told by the youngest children. 

Ask the artists, the scientists, the unhoused man
whose tent is hidden among brambles in the park. 

 
Consult an oracle, the Tarot, 
the Magic 8 Ball still there waiting in the toy box.

Open the nearest library book, eyes closed,
and drop my finger on the page for an answer. 
 
Ask the void. Ask the angels. 
 
Ask the seed waiting for spring. 
 
Ask beyond the question
until answers are no longer the point.

Laura Grace Weldon lives in a township too tiny for traffic lights where she works as a book editor, teaches writing workshops, serves as Braided Way editor, and chronically maxes out her library card. Laura was Ohio’s 2019 Poet of the Year and is the author of four books. 

CHAT GPT

by Harold Oberman

AI-generated image

AI ate my sonnet.

Gulped it down / Digested it,

Spit it out in reconstituted iambs.

I want to slip it some clichés,

Gunk up its system with pablum,

Make its metaphors as mediocre as mine.

Oh, don’t taunt me you rhyming clock,

You metronome, you precise pizza.

You took away my love of form,

Translated poetry into pi.

Eat it all my clever friend.

Harold Oberman is a poet and lawyer writing in Charleston, S.C. He has appeared recently in The New Verse News, The Free State Review, An Anthology of Low Country Poets, and has been honored by the Poetry Society of South Carolina for, among other things, a sonnet. However, he has given up on that after a now antiquated version of AI generated the following poem, with minor prodding, in 3 seconds:

Oh gravity, force that keeps us all in place,

That pulls us down and holds us to the earth,

A power strong and constant in its pace,

That gives our feet a steady, solid girth.

But horses, with their grace and beauty wild,

Seem not to feel the pull of gravity's might,

They gallop free, their manes and tails unfurled,

As if to mock the laws that bind us tight.

But though they seem to fly, they too are bound,

By gravity's unyielding grip on all,

And though they run with freedom all around,

They too must fall, when gravity's call.

So let us strive to soar, like horses do,

But always keep in mind, gravity's rule.