“Leaves of Grasstok” is a TikTok-inspired app that “learns” which poems you like from Walt Whitman's “Leaves of Grass” and adapts to your preferences. Each stanza is paired with a Depression-era FSA photo from the Library of Congress collection.
Using CLIP, a multi-modal embedding model, I matched images to stanzas and created an engagement-based recommendation system. The algorithm averages your last ten viewed stanzas, weighted by viewing time, to find the next most similar content. It's simple, but (I think!) effective.
This project aims to demonstrate how AI and the humanities can complement each other, creating something meaningful when thoughtfully combined—rather than being at odds, as they’re often portrayed (or even often are).
Link to the repo: https://github.com/jswest/leaves-of-grasstok
