Does this kind of thing alarm anyone else? Where are we going with it? Have we become so lazy and blase that we don't care whether or not talent and persistence are needed at all? For anything?"
Absolutely.
McGonagal may have been a mediocre poet, but at least he tried to do something creative.
The doggerel that was written about me shows the weakness of the GPT,
A set of uninspired words, no melody, dodgy facts.
there is no one correct way of writing a song, but from my own experience, a good song requires the writer to feel some passion about the subject matter.
Furthermore writing words and then a tune, is only one approach ,