TEHRAN -- The rise of artificial intelligence is forcing poets to reconsider not only how they write, but what makes their work distinctive. 
In a new book, Iranian poet and media activist Mahmoud Akramifar argues that the poet of the digital age must become more than a writer: they must learn to understand media, shape messages and use new technologies without surrendering their creative identity.
Akramifar’s book, Poetry in the Shadow of Artificial Intelligence, examines AI primarily as a tool at the poet’s disposal. The central question, he says, is not whether artificial intelligence will replace poetry, but what kind of poet will remain relevant when machines can increasingly produce language, images and other forms of creative content.
The book introduces terms including “hacker poet,” “media poet” and “self-poetization” as attempts to develop new concepts for understanding the changing role of the poet. 
Akramifar argues that poets working in contemporary media environments need to acquire skills beyond traditional literary practice and understand how messages are created, distributed and received.
His argument begins with a broader transformation in communication. Akramifar describes the present as an era of the “human media”, in which individuals increasingly function as their own media organizations. 
A smartphone, he notes, has become a personal media platform through which almost anyone can produce, distribute and filter information.
For poets, this shift creates both an opportunity and a challenge. The question is no longer simply what a poet writes, but how an experience is communicated across rapidly changing platforms and how it reaches an audience.
Akramifar believes that lasting 
artistic work will depend increasingly on originality. In the age of AI, he says, poets who merely reproduce familiar ideas or styles risk disappearing beneath an enormous volume of machine-assisted and human-generated content. Those who have something genuinely new to say, and who find new ways of saying it, will have a better chance of enduring.
The book therefore places particular
 emphasis on the poet’s lived experience and on the problem of translating that experience into forms capable of surviving within contemporary media.
But Akramifar is wary of treating AI as either a miracle or a threat. He compares it to a double-edged knife: its consequences depend on who uses it, how it is used and what knowledge the user possesses.
That makes media literacy, in his view, as important as technological literacy. Users need to understand the audiences, capabilities and limitations of different media platforms before they can use them effectively.
The argument extends beyond poetry. In a media environment where individuals can simultaneously become producers, distributors and gatekeepers of information, the ability to distinguish valuable communication from noise becomes increasingly important.
For Akramifar, AI does not eliminate the need for the poet. Instead, it raises the standard. The challenge for the poet is to develop a voice, an experience and an insight that cannot be reduced to the effortless production of words—and to learn how to carry that voice into a world increasingly shaped by machines.