In Russia, an AI Turns Poetry Into Visual Art
At a new exhibit in Tambov, a poet used neural networks to translate his own verses into striking images — exploring where creativity meets computation.
A unique exhibition of AI-generated visual poetry has opened in the Russian city of Tambov. Titled “Mayak GPT,” the project was created by poet Alexey Ishchak (who writes under the name Mayak Mayakov) and is being described as the first exhibition of its kind in Russia — and possibly anywhere.
When Words Become Images
For the project, Ishchak fed his own poems into AI image generators, experimenting with different styles and visual metaphors before selecting the final works himself. Out of more than 5,000 generated images, only 20 pieces were chosen for display — those that most closely captured the emotional intent of the original text.
The poet says the project isn’t about replacing the artist but about collaboration between human imagination and machine intelligence. “AI can be a great assistant if used wisely,” Ishchak noted. “But there are still things only a human can create.”
The exhibit blurs the line between poetry, technology, and visual art — reflecting a growing global curiosity about what creativity looks like when shared with machines.
