GoKawiilis a senior reviewer with over a decade of experience writing about consumer tech. She has a special interest in mobile photography and telecom. Previously, she worked at DPReview.
I’ve never been as charmed and frustrated by one gadget as I have with the Poetry Camera.
It’s a delightful object. White and cherry red with a color-matched woven strap, it looks playful and adorably lo-fi. If I saw it on a store shelf, I’d absolutely pick it up.
But aside from obviously appealing, I’m not exactly sure what it is. I mean, I know what it is. It’s a camera that makes AI poems instead of photos. You take a picture, and instead of printing a photo, you get an AI-generated poem inspired by the scene, printed on thermal receipt paper. But after printing dozens of poems, I can only report feeling frustrated instead of inspired.
Poetry according to AI.
There’s no screen on the camera itself, just a shutter button and a dial that lets you pick a different poem style. It only works when connected to a Wi-Fi network, relaying your image and a prompt tied to the camera setting you’ve chosen to the cloud. About 30 seconds later, the printer spits out a poem. Tear it off like you would a grocery store receipt, read it to your friends/spouse/cat, rinse and repeat. The poems themselves all sound a bit like this one, inspired by a picture I took in my kitchen:
Fingers curve the mug-
white cabinets hold their
secret:
another April
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