Beat My AI: Poetry: Originals

Overview
Beat My AI operates as an online magazine with a distinct curatorial premise: to stage a direct encounter between human and machine authorship. Its 'Original' section solicits poems that contain a limited, explicitly demarcated component generated or heavily influenced by artificial intelligence. This is not a gimmick but a structural invitation to examine the seam between algorithmic production and poetic intention. The journal's format ensures that accepted 'Original' pieces are not terminal; they become the occasion for a human-made 'Contender' response from another contributor, creating a dialogue that foregrounds process, authorship, and the limits of automation. For the submitting poet, the call demands both craft and conceptual clarity. The AI-influenced portion must be limited and clearly marked, meaning the work cannot simply be a raw dump of generated text. The poet remains the controlling intelligence, selecting, framing, and integrating the machine's contribution into a larger artistic statement. This positions the submission as a hybrid artifact—one that acknowledges the increasing presence of AI in creative practice while insisting on human editorial judgment. There is no fee to submit, and the call is rolling, which respects the poet's timeline and removes financial barriers. What the journal offers is publication within a curated conversation. Accepted 'Original' poems will be challenged by a 'Contender' piece, but that subsequent pairing does not diminish the original submission; rather, it situates it within a live critical exchange. The curatorial vision is less about declaring a winner than about documenting the evolving relationship between human and machine poetics. Poets who engage seriously with this premise—who treat the AI element as a compositional problem rather than a novelty—will find their work placed in a context that values interrogation over spectacle.