Imagine/ a clock that instead of simply telling you what time it is, does exactly this but in a form of a catchy poem, every minute! 1440 poems a day, reading poetry has never felt so exciting and accessible. It’s no joke, it is Poem/1. The AI clock, which uses ChatGPT as a source of content. It composes a unique rhyming couplet for every minute of every day. At first sight, for this is usually what you do when you want to know the time, the rhymes look childish, however as the designer Matt Webb claims he prompted the AI in a carefully thought through manner:

“Poem/1 is often profound, as it should be because I wrote that in the prompt to the AI. But it is also often weirdly motivational, and sometimes very odd, referring to the cosmos frequently, and balloons.”

source: press release

Some of the examples of time-telling poems are:

• “It’s almost noon, don’t be a loon! / Can’t you see the sun shining high as a balloon?”
• “The clock strikes one-thirty-eight, / Afternoon sun shines bright with fate.”
• “At six thirteen, love’s fire ignites / Passions bloom as darkness invites.”
• “The golden cog dances, time takes its flight / At seven fourteen, bathed in evening’s light.”

By integrating the AI clock with ChatGPT 3.5 Matt has decided to bet on affordability of the project, at the same time becoming a prompt whisperer once the technology gets updated. It may require more of his effort to be put into prompt engineering, or request the system to compose a well-crafted poem while including impeccably structured questions. But the clock is not just rhymes, it is really pleasing when it comes to its aesthetics too. Fixed with 4.7” e-paper screen, like Kindle readers, Poem/1 screen does not glow and instead attractively catches the light of its room. On top of that it features USB-C power cable, supplied in ‘A.I. green’, Wi-Fi, designer case and no subscriptions fees promise. Alongside Matt, it was the London-based industrial design Approach Studio who collaborated on the project as well as freelance technologist, designer and writer Tom Armitage.

“In this age of AI hardware products that promise to assist with tasks, or even be our friend, sometimes causing fears about AI our taking jobs, Poem/1 has a different point of view. Poem/1 uses AI to make something fun that we want to share our homes with, and it demystifies AI by making it approachable. Poem/1 is the first of a category that we call ‘ambient AI.”

says the designer Matt Webb, a founder and principal of a studio Acts Not Facts. We strongly recommend visiting and checking out other interesting projects of, like the most recent one, the Galactic Compass.

The project got successfully backed by the Kickstarter community a few weeks ago and is set to be delivered in June this year.