Response to Bots & Self-Generating Texts

Whether you know it or not, there is a good chance that you have interacted with web robots at least once before, or even interact with them everyday. So what exactly is a “web robot”? These robots, commonly known as bots, are programs that run automated tasks. These bots create simple and complex works, typically with the purpose of generating what for humans would be time consuming and never ending works. However, many of these bots are often used for malicious reasons. For example, certain chat-bots are used for scamming purposes since many of these self-generating text bots can easily be confused for being actual humans writing the text. Programmers set up parameters for the bots to follow so the text they create follows grammar rules and speech patterns to make them sound more human-like.

“Taroko Gorge” is a self-generating poem created by poet/digital media artist Nick Montfort. The text is produced line by line scrolling down the screen, endlessly describing a nature scene. This work is written in a code which Montfort gives the public free permission to use, copy, modify, or distribute. His code has allowed many other authors create and publish their own works of self-generating text. These automated programs are different than other software because they produce content that humans can interact with or view from an artistic standpoint. They are also different because they do not create the same work more than once, text generating bots formulate text randomly every time. Even though the text these bots create is random, they still follow sentence structure and speech patterns.

Pentametron is a Twitter bot created by Ranjit Bhatnagar. Bhatnagar is also interested in working with language, technology, and sound materials, which helped the development of this bot. Essentially, this bot uses an online dictionary service to locate various tweets in iambic pentameter. The bot then holds that tweet until it detects another tweet with the same rhyming pattern, and retweets them both to create a rhyming couplet. For example, tweets in succession include, “up for whatever reason .. nothing new,” “been craving some Korean BBQ,” “here goes another unproductive day,” “I have an interview tomorrow, yay!” According to a statement by the Electronic Literature Collection, Bhatnagar commented on his Twitter bot saying, “as a sound artist who studied some linguistics, I’m interested in language as a material for fabricating new kinds of art".