Weirding AI || Fine-tuning & RAG for Artists & Poets

​Buy your tix

​For those asking, this workshop isn't free! We're using Luma to put the word out. You can buy your ticket here: https://grayarea.org/course/weirding-ai-fine-tuning-and-rag-for-poets-artists/

​Event Description

​This 2-day (March 29th and March 30th, 1pm to 4pm each day) workshop invites participants to explore the intersection of AI-generated poetry and queer poetics, crafting their own fine-tuned, AI-driven poetic voices. Rather than simply prompting a language model, participants will engage in the deeper creative act of designing the datasets that shape AI’s expressive potential—curating its tone, constraints, and poetic identity.

​We’ll examine AI as an uncanny poetic collaborator, situating our work within a lineage of algorithmic writing that spans Markov chains, Oulipo constraints, and contemporary LLMs. Through hands-on experimentation, we’ll move beyond surface-level AI generation to explore fine-tuning and dataset curation as a form of authorship, uncovering how AI can serve as an extension of poetic intention, surprise, and enchantment.

​Concepts We’ll Explore:

• ​AI & Divination: Generative text as a form of oracular revelation (Tarot, automatic writing, AI as an unpredictable mirror)

• ​The Psychedelics of AI: The uncanny, the surreal, and the queerness of probabilistic meaning

• ​Poetic Constraint vs. AI Uncanniness: What happens when we design the constraints rather than just generate text?

• ​Performance, Theatricality & AI: What does it mean to create an AI with a persona? How do we perform with machines?

• ​Fine-Tuning vs. Prompt Engineering: The difference between curating a dataset vs. writing good prompts

​This workshop is for poets, artists, and technologists eager to experiment with AI not just as a tool, but as a co-creator—one that challenges, surprises, and extends our sense of poetic authorship.