Yes, exactly. [My Friend/The AI Authors] don't want to be seen as supporting [fascism/whatever-bad-thing] when the poem is published (potentially without suffic

Yes, exactly. [My Friend/The AI Authors] don't want to be seen as supporting [fascism/whatever-bad-thing] when the poem is published (potentially without sufficient context), so they decline to write the poem. I don't see it as untrustworthy to say "No thank you, I'd prefer not to". I'd also add that a further part of the problem is that non-technical-audiences tend to ascribe more intelligence and meaning to "AI" output than it should be given. "Look, the cutting edge AI trained on all human knowledge agrees that [fascist leader] did nothing wrong and it was really all those [other group of people]'s fault!" would get a lot of air play in some circles who wouldn't understand (or would choose to ignore) that the output isn't the product of some sort of infallible superhuman intelligence.