Pandora’s Box

Posted On May 8, 2026

Exploring the uncharted high peaks wilderness terrain of AI.

Yes, I know.

A crusty old Adirondack Outlaw hack of a writer is the last person that anyone, myself included, would ever in a million millenniums expect to find penning a piece about artificial intelligence. And yet here I am. In this moment I feel akin to the fisher cat in the trail camera photo above.

There I was, a few short evenings ago, trapsing along my usual trail, when I encountered something new, unfamiliar, a metal box on a post. “What is this strange creature?” I wondered to myself as I moved in close to give it a sniff & inspect it.

“Is this thing watching me?”

“Studying my every move?“

“Will it devour me?”

“Is it friend or foe?”

It all actually began with that very fisher cat photo. My AI journey, I mean. I shared the pic via email, as I quite often do, with my best friend from high school, a rougishly handsome insightfully intelligent soul who may or may not have ridden shotgun a time or two on a caper, and who’s friendship I’ve greatly valued through life’s many years. He’s also a good bit more tech savy than I (which may not be saying much, seeing as how I remain armed with a flip phone.) I sent him the pic under the caption ” One Curious Cat”.

The next morning he emailed me back.

“Hey, I really liked that fisher cat pic. I nicknamed him “Jehosaphat”. Then, on a whim, I sent the pic to Mircrosoft Co-Pilot and asked it to write me a poem. In about two minutes, here’s what Co-Pilot came back with:”

Jehoshaphat the Fisher Cat

(As written by Microsoft Co-Pilot, completely unedited)

In the hemlock hush of Brownsville, NY

Where frost writes lace on fern and rye,

Jehoshaphat pads the midnight track—

A shadow with whiskers, a sable black.

He sniffs the wind by an old stone wall,

Reads vole-script scrawled in snowdrifts small,

When—click!—a red eye blinks awake,

A box on a tree with a watchful take.

Jehoshaphat pauses, tilts his head,

Moonlight silvering thoughts unsaid.

Is it owl? Is it trick of bark?

Is it a star that learned the dark?

He steps once more, a princely pose,

Tail like a comma, pause for a nose,

The forest holds its breath to see

What a fisher cat thinks of mystery.

Flash! The night blinks back again,

Time-stamp ticks its square refrain.

Somewhere a lens has kept the proof

Of curious paws and a question aloof.

By dawn, the woods are only tracks,

The cam remembers; the cat goes back—

Jehoshaphat, with secrets intact,

Upon reading it through, my initial reaction was “Wow.” I emailed my best friend back:

“This is levels above anything I could ever write. I’m not quite sure what to make of it.”

Like the fisher cat, I was curiously uncertain about what I’d just encountered. It felt like I’d just wandered into an alien world. What was this new AI Co-Pilot thing? Was it legit? How were such things to be credited? Had my best friend just authored a poem? What would the rules for such things be going forward? Was it even legal to use such creations? Had I as a writer just been replaced?

I must admit, the entire experience left me more than a little unnerved.

So I did a brief bit of online research. Turns out the rise of this Co-Pilot type AI writing stuff is quite controversial, with very few in place regulations, laws, guidelines or rules. generating many questions, concerns & even several copyright lawsuits. I also reached out to Adirondack Explorer Editor in Chief Melissa Hart for some guidance.

While I mentally processed all of that, I decided to conduct a little experiment. I sent Microsoft Co-Pilot, one at a time, a pair of My Monroe Wildlife Area’s recent trail camera images. With each image I included a title & requested Co-Pilot write me a poem based on that particular trail camera image, caption/title, and guidance.

Here’s what Microsof Co-Pilot gave me:

***To reiterate, the trail camera image, title, and guidance behind each of the next pair of poems were mine. The poems themselves were entirely AI written/created (in under two minutes apiece, I might add), by my really old school (I really need to invest in a new one) Dell Computer’s version of Microsoft Co-Pilot. ***

Nature’s Brushstroke Masterpiece

Upon the pond’s calm mirrored face,

A living canvas glides with ease—

Each feather stroked in vivid grace,

A palette born of ancient trees.

Emerald crown with ruby gleam,

Chestnut flanks in twilight’s glow;

He moves as if within a dream

Where only wildest colors flow.

No artist’s hand could quite release

Such hues that shift with every breeze;

He is, in motion and in peace,

Nature’s brushstroke masterpiece.

And as he drifts through fading light,

Reflections ripple, soft and deep—

A fleeting gallery of night

That only water knows to keep.

**********

Morning Mayhem

The mist still clings to cattail spires,

A hush upon the waking stream;

Then—honks erupt like brass and choirs,

Shredding dawn’s half‑finished dream.

Wings slap water, chaos reigns,

Ripples race through mirrored gray;

Feathers flash like sudden flames,

And peace is trampled in their play.

The lead goose cuts a royal path,

Commanding order none obey;

Behind him, laughter, splash, and wrath—

A feathered riot greets the day.

Soon silence mends the broken glass,

Fog folds back its fragile hem;

But somewhere in the reeds, alas,

Echoes linger—morning mayhem.

**********

Now, to be clear, in my humble opinion these Co-Pilot poem examples are far from perfect. I see several places in nearly each line of each poem, where I as a human would alter or edit wording and punctuation. But, and it’s a major but, as draft poems, they are both startlingly good.

As a comparison, let’s go back to the beginning. Below is a fisher cat poem, based on the same pic, that is totally my own:

“One Curious Cat”

(A totally human Adirondack Outlaw original)

Trapsing along on his usual route

The fisher cat spots something different

He stops to inspect it

“What’s this new thing about?”

His movements get captured with the blink of an eye

The fisher cat freezes

Startled, suspicious, he wonders;

“Is this thing a spy?”

The fisher cat sniffs the night

“What are this stranger’s motives?”

“Am I in imminent danger?”

“Is my response fight, or flight?”

The fisher cat cautiously takes two steps back

The stranger’s eye flashes again

Leaving the fisher

One curious cat

**********

It took me nearly an hour to put together that poem. Do I think it is better than the one Microsoft Co-Pilot produced in two minutes? No. I do not. That’s the whole point. While I am admittedly no Robert Frost, I am, in fact, a writer, and human. In the time it took me to draft that poem, I suspect Microsoft Co-Pilot’s AI knowledge based eloquence grew exponentially. How are mere humanoid writers expected to compete going forward?

So, here is where I think things for the human writing community are going to become a swamp filled muck quicksand quagmire, if they are not already, in the imminent future. If a writer decides to do what I just did, then edits the Co-Pilot rough draft provided and presents the poem (or short story, or novel for that matter) as their own, how will anyone know?

As another quick exercise, I wanted to see just how quickly Co-pilot could generate a short story. Again, I gave it a photo, title and guidance. In under two minutes it handed me a cogently workable high quality draft.

So what is to prevent a writer from doing just that? I can see how someone who wanted to, for whatever their reasons or motives, could put together an entire AI/Co-Pilot assisted collection of poetry, short stories, even a novel or series of novels in very short order. In fact, after drafting the initial short story that I requested, my computer’s Microsoft Co-Pilot offered to do for me just that.

It appears to me, I’m afraid, that as with many things, for the forseeable future, it’s all going to come down to one thing:

Individual Integrity

Which leaves me wondering,

Are AI technologies such as Microsoft Co-Pilot like the trail camera, a tool?

Or are they a Pandora’s Box that ends up devouring the cat?

***Thanks to Adirondack Explorer Editor in Chief Melissa Hart for her professional input & guidance as I was putting together this piece. ***

**********

Until Our Trails Cross Again:

ADKO