Photographer invents world's first camera that writes poems for its images using AI and a Raspberry Pi

Earlier in the year, makers of small single-board computers (SBCs) Raspberry Pi wrote a story about a camera that writes poems. 

The Poetry Camera used Raspberry Pi Zero 2 alongside a Raspberry Pi camera module and thermal printer, to create poems, not pictures. 

After the original post gained the attention of Elías Sarquis, he wrote to Raspberry Pi to tell them about his own creation, which he invented in 2018, predating the Poetry Camera. 

While the Poetry Camera creates only poems, Sarquis’ Cámara Poética, captures and keeps the images, as well as translating the information into a poem. 

It uses their Pi 3B+ with a 5 MP camera (later upgraded 8 MP),  Google Cloud Vision, and an algorithm based on Markov chains to generate the poetic lines. Recently, however, Sarquis switched to ChatGPT API, using GPT-4 and GPT-4 Turbo. 

Speaking to Raspberry Pi, Sarquis explained that he calls these creations, “poetographies,” short pieces of content that relate to the images.

According to the interview, the project was born from Sarquis’ “profound desire” to share his perspective with others through words. Growing up as a shy child, he turned to photography at a very young age as a way to express how he views the world.

The Cámara Poética is by no means Sarquis’ only creation, and he’s also responsible for the Visor Poetográfico, which consists of a 15-inch display, a Raspberry Pi Zero W, a translucent curtain, and a light sensor.

The interactive frame automatically uploads each photo taken with the Cámara Poética remotely, recording a real-time record of what the camera captures.

While the Poetry Camera prints out poems printed on small pieces of paper, the Cámara Poética is digital, and Sarquis uses the Visor Poetográfico to display his photos.

Examples of his poetry and photography can be seen on his website and Instagram, including a poem that accompanies an image of an egg against a blue vignette background (see above). The poem, written in Spanish, roughly translates as:

"Life has life, the earth egg.
Photography and life laugh.
The egg drowns out the white storm.
Our desire still gives life."

Take a look at our guide to the best AI image generators, and the best film scanners.