Botnik Studios
Type of site | Entertainment website |
|---|---|
| URL | www |
| Launched | 2016[1] |
Botnik Studios is an entertainment group developed to exhibit work created by the Botnik community, a writer's society of artists and developers who incorporate technology in the creation of comedy.[3] This content is published on the Botnik homepage.[4]
Features
Botnik's main tool is a predictive text keyboard, similar to one used by a smartphone. It offers options of words to type based on what has been previously entered, meaning that if the tool has analyzed a body of text it will find combinations of words likely to be used by a particular author[5] whose text has been 'scraped' by the system.[6]
The result generally sounds almost authentic in that it is recognizable but ridiculous enough to be funny.[7]
History
The program was developed by Jamie Brew, a former Clickhole and The Onion writer, and Bob Mankoff, who is humor editor at Esquire and former cartoon editor of The New Yorker.[8][9][10] In August 2017 they were joined by computational scientist Elle O'Brien[11] and creative developer Joseph Parker.[12] Brew and O'Brien are based in Seattle and Mankoff and Parker work in New York.[13]
In 2017 Botnik began referring to themselves as an open community,[14] meaning Botnik users can download the predictive keypad, experiment with the tool and display their outcomes on the community page of the Botnik website.[15] In July of that year they received a grant from the Amazon/Techstars Accelerator Program thanks to being a startup whose technology could realistically improve Amazon's smart speaker assistant, Alexa.[16]
Botnik became better known when Zach Braff, the actor who plays J.D. on the medical comedy series Scrubs, shared a recording of himself reading a Scrubs-style monologue written by the Botnik system in December 2017.[17]
Botnik's Harry Potter and the Portrait of What Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash was ranked number four in the list of ten best internet moments in 2017 by The Guardian.[18]
References
- ^ Elio, Anthony. "An Inside Look at Botnik Studios’ Absurd AI" Innovation & Tech Today (February 8, 2019)
- ^ "Botnik.org Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved January 22, 2018.
- ^ Flood, Alison (13 December 2017). "'He began to eat Hermione's family': bot tries to write Harry Potter book – and fails in magic ways". the Guardian. Retrieved 22 January 2018.
- ^ "Botnik Augmented Content". Botnik. Archived from the original on 25 January 2018. Retrieved 22 January 2018.
- ^ "Botnik Studios". botnik.org. Retrieved 22 January 2018.
- ^ The Cracked Podcast (22 January 2018). "How Predictive Text Gave Us A New Harry Potter Chapter" (Podcast). Cracked. Event occurs at 21:38. Retrieved 22 January 2018.
the mass crowd driven thing came in the last year. We modelled it after comedy writers groups
- ^ "Truly creative A.I. is just around the corner. Here's why that's a big deal". Digital Trends. 5 January 2018. Retrieved 22 January 2018.
- ^ Schuessler, Jennifer (7 March 2017). "A Cartoonist Savors His Favorite Art for The New Yorker". The New York Times. Retrieved 22 January 2018.
- ^ Elio, Anthony. "An Inside Look at Botnik Studios’ Absurd AI" Innovation & Tech Today (February 8, 2019)
- ^ Raftery, Brian. "The Surreal Comedy Bot That's Turning AI Into LOL" Wired (October 23, 2017)
- ^ "Elle O'brien on Linkedin". Retrieved 22 January 2018.
- ^ Berman, Robby. "A Bot Wrote a New Harry Potter Chapter, and It Is Utterly Crazy". Big Think. Retrieved 22 January 2018.
- ^ "Wherrelz : Startup Spotlight: Can a machine learn to laugh Botnik crosses a comedian with AI to find out : curated startup news". wherrelz.com. Retrieved 22 January 2018.
- ^ The Cracked Podcast (22 January 2018). "How Predictive Text Gave Us A New Harry Potter Chapter" (Podcast). Cracked. Event occurs at 17:10. Retrieved 22 January 2018.
the mass crowd driven thing came in the last year. We modelled it after comedy writers groups
- ^ "Startup Spotlight: Can a machine learn to laugh? Botnik crosses a comedian with AI to find out". GeekWire. 26 October 2017. Retrieved 22 January 2018.
- ^ "A Former Clickhole Writer Made a 'Content Bot' That Will Probably Become My Boss". Motherboard. 12 October 2017. Retrieved 22 January 2018.
- ^ "Zach Braff reprises his 'Scrubs' character to read a script written by an A.I." Digital Trends. 19 December 2017. Retrieved 22 January 2018.
- ^ Wong, Julia Carrie (29 December 2017). "Ten genuinely great things the internet gave us in 2017, featuring baby hippos". the Guardian. Retrieved 22 January 2018.
External links
