Photo credit: Kaylee Pugliese/RISD
The Poetry Camera, crafted by Kelin Carolyn Zhang and Ryan Mather, doesn’t spit out glossy prints or digital files. Instead, it captures a scene and distills it into words—poetry, to be precise—printed on a strip of receipt-like paper. A Polaroid for the soul rather than the eye if you will.
This open-source creation, powered by Anthropic’s Claude 4 AI, has sparked curiosity since its debut, and was born from a desire to push against the visual overload of social media. “The project’s origin is when I got access to GPT-3,” Mather shared with TechCrunch. “What if you took a camera, but it was a reaction to Instagram culture? What if text comes out instead of a photo?” This question drove the duo to create a device that transforms fleeting moments into stanzas, not pixels.
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The camera’s boxy frame, complete with a comically oversized lens and shutter button, harks back to the days of instant cameras, but its output is anything but conventional. Point it at a person, a tree, or a coffee mug, and it conjures a poem, printed instantly through a slit below the lens.
Hardware wise, there’s a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 that works alongside a Camera Module 3 to snap images. Those visuals get fed to Claude 4, which analyzes the colors, shapes, and even emotional vibes to spin out poetry. The finished verses don’t just live on a screen—they’re printed out on a curling strip of paper by an Adafruit Mini Thermal Printer, a tangible keepsake that Zhang and Mather intentionally keep offline, free from the digital void. “We don’t save any of the images or the poems digitally,” Mather explained to TechCrunch. “One, it’s easier. Two: privacy. Three, it adds extra meaning to the poems if they’re like these ephemeral sorts of artifacts. If you lose it, it’s gone.”
Zhang and Mather first shared their prototype at social gatherings, where it became a conversation catalyst. Friends and family marveled as mundane objects—a vase, a pair of shoes—transformed into poetic reflections. “People find childlike joy in their playful persona,” Zhang told TechCrunch.
Zhang and Mather opted for Claude 4 from Anthropic, citing the company’s commitment to not training on user data. “We care to pick reputable AI model providers that do not train on your data,” they told designboom. The open-source design, with DIY instructions available on GitHub, empowers makers to build their own, while limited-edition drops cater to those less inclined to wield a soldering iron. “The most sustainable thing would be not to make anything at all,” Zhang admitted.
The Poetry Camera’s aesthetic offers retro charm, thanks to a 3D-printed enclosure that balances a polished, Poké Ball-like appeal with functional simplicity. “Everyone has a camera in their pocket through their cell phone now—we wanted to do something very different,” Mather said.
As interest grows, Zhang and Mather are cautiously considering commercial availability. “After the first 100 times people asked, we said, ‘We’re not selling it,’ but after 101 questions, we started thinking about it in more detail,” Zhang shared.
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