The Intelligent Frame is a (work-in-progress) AI-powered dynamic photo frame that generates a unique version of your family photo for every day of the year.
What if your photo frame knew what day it was?
That question led me to build the Intelligent Frame, an e-ink based digital photo frame that transforms a static family photo into a dynamic, unique celebration every day. Below you can see example images on a 7.3" e-ink screen.
The images above were taken of a Spectra 6 color e-ink panel running on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W. All images are from a prompt chain that considers the date and basic biographical information of the subjects (names and birthdates, for instance), chooses an appropriate daily theme, generates a comprehensive image editing prompt, then processes the image on-the-fly. The workflow is model agnostic, but currently I use Google Gemini for its incredible image editing capabilities.
Of course, not every day is a birthday or major holiday. Fortunately, the frame covers these edge cases without a problem. Turns out there's a whole lot of obscure holidays out there. See below for a few standouts.
How Did We Get Here?
All fun projects spawn new ideas along the way. The idea for this one came while I was building CAPP·E 2, which had me thinking a lot about image editing. For that project, I built a purpose-specific prompt chain that invented funny ways to insert capybaras into photographs. This technique was very fun...
...so much so that I went and made a simple prompt-chaining interface in Google's AI Studio to keep experimenting with Gemini's amazing new image editing features. Couple screenshots of that to the right.
The prompt-chaining tool opened up lots of new possibilities, and I began experimenting with different family photos for fun.
Seeing new life in these old images is magical.
The Stardew Connection
This project is inspired by a lot of magical things, including the living portraits in the Harry Potter series and the daily-generated murmurations on my Bird Machine (shameless plug, but this is my portfolio). But there's another great example of this kind of fantasy object: the Seasonal Decor item in the farming simulator game Stardew Valley. Which, by the way, is a hugely inspiring masterwork developed entirely by one person.
The seasons play a major role in Stardew, and so do decorations, which you can set up in your house and around your farm. Most decorative items look the same all year long. But later in the game, you come across so-called "Seasonal Decor," which, like the name implies, changes appearance with the season. See below.
It's a surprisingly sweet touch from a game world that's chock full of surprisingly sweet touches. And it's the sort of creative object that could only exist in a fantasy world...
... until now!
What's next?
This project is still in its early stages. I'm very excited to build out the full prototype frame, which will include making a bronze-filled 3D printed frame, a private image-generation API, and more robust context engineering to improve outputs. Currently, around 90% of outputs are good (many of them great), while the remaining 10% suffer from some combination of unrecognizable subjects and a poor quality edits. But even amongst that 10%, many of the images are still fun and surprising.
Plus, it turns out you can get away with slight facial distortion when you're displaying photos on an 800x480 e-ink screen. Check back soon for more!
