Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Nigerian-Japanese Transnational Environmental Poetry

Abstract

Abstract        
Despite growing interest in artificial intelligence (AI) across the humanities, its influence on transnational environmental poetry remains underexplored, particularly within the Nigerian–Japanese literary context. This study investigates how AI shapes thematic concerns, stylistic experimentation, and cultural discourse in contemporary eco-poetry, focusing on Tanure Ojaide’s When Green was the Lingua Franca and Lee Ann Roripaugh’s Ontology of Tsunami.    
The study draws on Manovich’s (2024) theory of AI as a cultural system, Egya’s (2011) work on Nigerian environmental poetry, and Takahashi’s (2020) study of Japanese ecopoetics. It employs a qualitative comparative literary methodology. This approach allows for a nuanced analysis of the two selected poems, and they help to identify how AI functions not merely as a technical tool but as a cultural force influencing poetic expression and ethical reflection across diverse ecological contexts.
The study reveals that AI significantly informs the poets’ portrayal of environmental degradation and natural disasters, introducing algorithmic awareness and digital aesthetics into poetic form. Ojaide’s depiction of the Niger Delta incorporates technological critique, while data-driven representations shape Roripaugh’s response to tsunami trauma. Both poets engage in stylistic innovation, fragmented narratives and intertextual layering, which suggests a creative synergy between human and machine. Through this lens, AI emerges as a mediating presence in the transnational eco-poetic imagination, raising critical questions about sentience, agency, and ecological responsibility.            
The study contributes to ecocriticism and transnational poetics by highlighting the complex role of AI in reshaping literary approaches to environmental consciousness and cross-cultural engagement.