Botnik Studios

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.[2] This content is published on the Botnik homepage.[3]

Botnik Studios
Type of site
Entertainment website
URLwww.botnik.org
Launched2016 (2016)[1]

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[4] whose text has been 'scraped' by the system.[5]

The result generally sounds almost authentic in that it is recognizable but ridiculous enough to be considered funny by readers.[6]

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.[7][8][9] In August 2017 they were joined by computational scientist Elle O'Brien[10] and creative developer Joseph Parker.[11] Brew and O'Brien are based in Seattle and Mankoff and Parker work in New York.[12]

In 2017 Botnik began referring to themselves as an open community,[13] meaning Botnik users can download the predictive keypad, experiment with the tool and display their outcomes on the community page of the Botnik website.[14] 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.[15]

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.[16]

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.[17]

References
  1. Elio, Anthony. "An Inside Look at Botnik Studios’ Absurd AI" Innovation & Tech Today (February 8, 2019)
  2. 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.
  3. "Botnik Augmented Content". Botnik. Archived from the original on 25 January 2018. Retrieved 22 January 2018.
  4. "Botnik Studios". botnik.org. Retrieved 22 January 2018.
  5. 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
  6. "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.
  7. Schuessler, Jennifer (7 March 2017). "A Cartoonist Savors His Favorite Art for The New Yorker". The New York Times. Retrieved 22 January 2018.
  8. Elio, Anthony. "An Inside Look at Botnik Studios’ Absurd AI" Innovation & Tech Today (February 8, 2019)
  9. Raftery, Brian. "The Surreal Comedy Bot That's Turning AI Into LOL" Wired (October 23, 2017)
  10. "Elle O'brien on Linkedin". Retrieved 22 January 2018.
  11. Berman, Robby. "A Bot Wrote a New Harry Potter Chapter, and It Is Utterly Crazy". Big Think. Retrieved 22 January 2018.
  12. "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.
  13. 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
  14. "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.
  15. "A Former Clickhole Writer Made a 'Content Bot' That Will Probably Become My Boss". Motherboard. 12 October 2017. Retrieved 22 January 2018.
  16. "Zach Braff reprises his 'Scrubs' character to read a script written by an A.I." Digital Trends. 19 December 2017. Retrieved 22 January 2018.
  17. 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.
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