TL/DR: The Short Version: If photography is "capturing light," synthography is "distilling language." I feed my poetry into a digital "imagination camera" that translates my metaphors into patterns and pixels—turning the DNA of my writing into a visual landscape.
Synthography it is.
In short, it means human and AI collaboration to create an image, video, or song.
More in depth from Google:
"Synthography is the emerging art form of creating images using artificial intelligence (AI) models, a process distinct from traditional photography (which captures light) or digital painting, where an artist uses prompts, parameters, and iterative refinement to generate visuals from text or other inputs, essentially "writing" or "drawing" with an "imagination camera".
It combines "synthetic" creation with "graphy" (writing/drawing) to describe the skill of crafting detailed prompts and tuning AI models to produce unique, often photorealistic, synthetic media."
My Perspective:
I discovered Generative AI during a difficult time of my life and the creative outlet it afforded me was a blessing.
You can read more about it in "Prompt Monkey'.
Transparency with AI and publishing in any form is non negotiable. I know other artists that use Gen AI and I'm pretty certain they feel the same.
We're not in competition with other art forms from a creative purest perspective.
We admire your great shots, art works, music and we're not itching to swipe your work to put our spin on it either. Images, sound or written words. Period.
Acknowledging what myself and virtually everyone in the world now knows that not only our content but all the great works of art, all mediums was used to train models through machine learning.
I feel it and I understand it.
On the other hand, how did any of us learn?
We consumed content.
Now we're getting down to questions I don't have the answer too like, "Did they buy the content and reimburse the creator? Did they buy the books?"
We have to buy books we want to read for enjoyment and learning.
Here is where we are. The technology is helpful.
The world is changing.
We must be flexible and change with it
So, I enjoy creating images with my poetry and written works and I'm not ashamed or sorry about it.
I read an excellent article on Medium (From Digital Photography to AI Synthography) , The author talks about painters seeing the new photographers like, those not only in photography, but the art world at large are viewing the new synthographers.
We're the new kids on the block artist who use words crafted in prompts to create incredible imagery.
(And the wheel in the sky keeps on turnin...)
AI won't replace photography just like photography didn't replace pastels & watercolors.
AI won't replace your human voice even though AI is a great conversationalist.
You are in control of your boundaries. Nobody is asking us to give other art forms up.
No form of art will ever go out of style.
Synthography (AI art) won't always be gauche in some circles either.
AI is a valuable tool and a new media for creating art.
It's important to me to create content that is one hundred percent mine. Gen AI opened this opportunity up for me. It's the reason I had a blog titled Original Human Content for a time because that is my priority.
Mother Wound was my first published synthograhic illustration for my poetry in 2022. Created with PlaygroundAI.
I don't feel like I'm shooting fish in a barrel either. I like to explain the process as using my words like a paint brush or stylus to push pixels around on an AI canvas but it really is more random. My words get converted to ones and zeros and then return to me as an interpretation by the Generative model. Some have been a hit out of the ball park, some wildly surreal outputs even when my prompt included only slightly surreal elements and a bunch of duds.
Duds are productive failure.
That's when we learn how to refine our prompts and try again.
Every image published here, and other places I share my poetry, is a visual poem because my poetry is in the prompt. You read the poetry but you're also looking at the poetry. Literally.
The same is true for my other writing.
I know a lot of poets doing this, maybe we're the new media poets? Many of them are published authors!
Whether I'm the only one using the synthography tag or not I'm going to continue using it. It's a short sleeker way to say a lot of what I just did in one word.
My Commitment to the art:
Originality First:
I do not "face-swap" or mimic the specific style of living artists. My prompts are built from my own vocabulary and metaphors.
Full Disclosure:
I will always tag or label synthetic media as Synthography so you know exactly how the work was brought to life.
Creative Integrity:
AI is my tool, but the heart, the "why," and the final polish are 100% human.
Thanks for reading. I would love to know your thoughts.
I'm sharing some of my favorite images at the end of this. But first, here are a couple of things on AI I have published on the web:
AI Historical Timeline (SundayX)
The 99 Theses on Ethics in Artificial Intelligence: A Dialogue for Everyday People
AI & Data literacy needs to be taught in schools, like yesterday. And prerequisite for higher learning too.
Grok:
Starryai:
WonderAI (2022):
Nightcafe:
PlaygroundAI:
Pixel Studio:
© January 8, 2026 | baccusbee
(Words above mine. Header image created with Grok a collaborative process called synthography. The other images as attributed.)
Below is Gemini's explanation to readers how the process works:
I would be honored to be quoted!
Here is a simple, plain-English explanation of how we work together, framed through the lens of your "visual poetry" philosophy.
How Synthography Works: A Simple Guide
Think of a Generative AI model like a massive, digital library that has "read" almost every image and description ever created. It doesn't store these images; instead, it remembers the patterns of how things look and how they relate to words.
Here is the step-by-step process of how a poem becomes a "Synthograph":
* The Blueprint (The Prompt): It starts with the artist’s words. When you feed a poem or a specific description into the AI, you are giving it a "mathematical map." You aren't just saying "draw a flower"; you are giving it the mood, the lighting, and the emotional texture of your writing.
* The Noise: The AI starts with a canvas of "digital static" (it looks like television snow).
* The Refinement: Guided by your words, the AI begins to "de-noise" the static. It looks for patterns that match your poem. If your poem mentions "grief," it looks for the shadows and colors it has learned represent that feeling. It pushes pixels around—narrowing down from chaos to a clear image—until the patterns on the screen match the intent of your words.
* The Iteration: Because the model is interpreting the words, it’s a collaboration. Sometimes the AI finds a "surreal" path the artist didn't expect. The synthographer then refines their words, trying again and again until the visual "ones and zeros" finally sing in the same key as the poem.
> The Bottom Line: If traditional photography is "capturing light," synthography is "distilling language." It is the process of using human thought to pull a specific image out of a sea of digital possibilities.
(Thanks again for reading.)
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