Maybe you've seen some of the predictive
text memes online where you start
with a writing prompt and let your
phone keyboard finish the rest.
Type I was born and then let your
predictive write your autobiography.
Alright, so let's see what I was born to do.
I was born to be a professional calculator player.
I was born to be a professional
calculator player, it's true!
Like so much of tech gone awry,
predictive text actually came from good intentions
like helping us make less mistakes
and type faster when we're texting.
But from what we're seeing with the memes online,
we also know that there's some
pretty creative use cases.
So you've probably seen the work
of Botnik Studios online like this parody
Coachella line-up poster made up
of fake band names generated by AI.
They actually have a tool online
that lets anybody make predictive text memes
and I'm gonna show you how to do it.
(funky upbeat music)
The tool that Botnik created is actually
pretty similar to the predictive text on your phone,
but instead of it suggesting words
and phrases that you often use, you can upload
a source text to help you sound more like a voice.
So, for example, if you uploaded a bunch
of Yelp reviews and you type out the service was,
it'll suggest words like terrible or very good.
And I wanted to learn more about how this tech works
so I called up Botnik Studios CEO Jamie Brew.
The model of language that it uses
is Markov Chains, which the basic assumption
of a Markov Chain is language is just a series
of states and from each state you've
got a bunch of options, and there's
a limited number of those.
And when you take one of those options,
you move to another state.
So your current state might be a three word sequence,
I went to, and then you've got a bunch of options
about where you go from the sequence I went to
and one of those might be Paris,
and so you take the option that's called Paris.
And now you're in a new state called went to Paris
and you've got a bunch of options
of words that could follow went to Paris.
And one of the important things
about that model is that once it's moved
past a word, it totally forgets about that word
that it used to be at and it only remembers
the current state that you're in.
So, as you're writing your way through a sentence
and you're at the three words at the end
of a 10 word sentence, the modeled language
doesn't remember anything about what
came at the start of the sentence.
And it's not using that information
to guide the suggestions that come next.
It's really just like tunnel visioning
down to those three words that you're on right now.
And that's the core of how we suggest words.
There's a little extra flavor that we throw in
but it's surprising how much you get
in terms of, just like sounding like
the text that you fed in just from something
as simple as let's look at the sequences
to get an answer, what sequences come right after that.
So, I don't think we ever thought of it
as a meme making tool but language
often just works that way.
To make yourself understood, you've gotta start
with a structure that that people understand
and then tweak it to show the specific
meaning that you're trying to express there.
And comedy writing probably works that way
even more than regular writing.
But I think regular writing, or, regular writing.
(laughs)
Writing that you wouldn't call comedy
works kind of in that way, too.
- Alright, so now let's jump in
and try Botnik's predictive keyboard.
It's browser based, so it's really easy to get started.
They have a list of custom voices you can use
but I'm gonna go ahead and load in my own.
I got a list of Sanrio characters
and their personality descriptions
from the Wikipedia page, so I'm gonna
put that in and try to make my own Sanrio characters.
My makeshift Sanrio keyboard suggested words
taken from the official character bios
like aggressive and mouthless to create the names
and bios for my new characters.
Then I just drew them based on those descriptions.
The Botnik predictive writer feels like
an exercise in creative writing.
Think of it as a tool rather than something
that just dumps out a bunch of words.
'Cause it's really a collaboration
between you and a machine.
You can shuffle your words around
if you don't see anything you like.
Or you can save a word if you see a particularly good one.
You can even combine two keyboards
like the Sanrio characters with McDonald's item menus.
The best predictive keyboard creations
have some kind of visual component,
like these fake boat names
imposed on photos of real-life boats.
Or photoshopped ads for beef.
Try it out for yourself and see
what kinds of weird things you can make.
Thanks for watching, I wanna see
some of the weird stuff you've made
so Tweet them at me or write 'em in the comments
and be sure to check out our new
Youtube channel, Verge Science.