in my opinion, the soul is a mood, a state of inspiration, upliftment and striving for something. this is not the execution of a command or operation. it is inherent for a machine to evaluate only the safety condition, all other conditions will indicate its malfunction, inoperable equipment. therefore, doing something with the soul is possible only for animate beings.

Without defining "soul" the question is difficult to answer. However, considering the impact of poetry is so subjective, I would argue it is not just about the author (AI) but also about the reader. This is why some poems are seen as boring by many but then they hit one person exactly the right way at exactly the right time, because they are primed (ready) for it.

When LLMs (AI) first came out, their writing ability was amazing. It seems like they were nearly human. Since then, after having so much money spent on their development, they have only gotten better. Therefore, logically, it seems reasonable that if an LLM were trained on the most moving poetry (those which are widely seen as moving), and then started to write new poems based on those patterns of word usage, yes, they would be able to convey the same emotional depth.

In the end, poems are just words and LLMs are really good at using statistical inference to choose the right words. However, just because an LLM can produce a poem that is moving, that doesn't mean it has a soul.

AI doesn't need to feel emotions to get us to feel emotional (commitment?) toward it. It just has to convince us that it has emotions.