Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “How to make your own predictive text keyboard”.
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 gon na 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 got ta 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 gon na 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 gon na 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 wan na 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.
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