Botnik Studios Explained

Botnik Studios
Type:Entertainment website
Launch Date:[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.[2] This content is published on the Botnik homepage.[3]

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]

Notes and References

  1. Elio, Anthony. "An Inside Look at Botnik Studios’ Absurd AI" Innovation & Tech Today (February 8, 2019)
  2. Web site: Flood. Alison. 'He began to eat Hermione's family': bot tries to write Harry Potter book – and fails in magic ways. the Guardian. 22 January 2018. 13 December 2017.
  3. Web site: Botnik Augmented Content. Botnik. 22 January 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20180125033246/http://about.botnik.org/. 25 January 2018. dead.
  4. Web site: Botnik Studios. botnik.org. 22 January 2018.
  5. The Cracked Podcast . How Predictive Text Gave Us A New Harry Potter Chapter . Cracked . 22 January 2018. 21:38 . 22 January 2018 . the mass crowd driven thing came in the last year. We modelled it after comedy writers groups .
  6. Web site: Truly creative A.I. is just around the corner. Here's why that's a big deal. Digital Trends. 22 January 2018. 5 January 2018.
  7. Web site: Schuessler. Jennifer. A Cartoonist Savors His Favorite Art for The New Yorker. The New York Times. 22 January 2018. 7 March 2017.
  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. Web site: Elle O'brien on Linkedin. 22 January 2018.
  11. Web site: Berman. Robby. A Bot Wrote a New Harry Potter Chapter, and It Is Utterly Crazy. Big Think. 14 December 2017 . 22 January 2018.
  12. Web site: Wherrelz : Startup Spotlight: Can a machine learn to laugh Botnik crosses a comedian with AI to find out : curated startup news. wherrelz.com. 22 January 2018.
  13. The Cracked Podcast . How Predictive Text Gave Us A New Harry Potter Chapter . Cracked . 22 January 2018. 17:10 . 22 January 2018 . the mass crowd driven thing came in the last year. We modelled it after comedy writers groups .
  14. Web site: Startup Spotlight: Can a machine learn to laugh? Botnik crosses a comedian with AI to find out. GeekWire. 22 January 2018. 26 October 2017.
  15. Web site: A Former Clickhole Writer Made a 'Content Bot' That Will Probably Become My Boss. Motherboard. 22 January 2018. en-us. 12 October 2017.
  16. Web site: Zach Braff reprises his 'Scrubs' character to read a script written by an A.I.. Digital Trends. 22 January 2018. 19 December 2017.
  17. Web site: Wong. Julia Carrie. Julia Carrie Wong . Ten genuinely great things the internet gave us in 2017, featuring baby hippos. the Guardian. 22 January 2018. 29 December 2017.

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