“OK, it’s amazing right now with Isis, I tell you what? I don’t want them to vote, the worst very social people. I love me.”
Donald Trump may be a “really smart person” by his own estimation, but his speeches are now fuelling a really smart Twitter bot, which uses artificial-intelligence technology to copy the Republican frontrunner.
The quote above comes from “Deep Drumpf” rather than the real Trump, with the account running on algorithms created at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab.
Equipment, I finally got to be stupid. We ought to send used equipment, right? I don’t need any, I love China. I mean I can take the country
— DeepDrumpf (@DeepDrumpf) March 3, 2016
We have competence. Our people don’t need anybody. I have smart people.
— DeepDrumpf (@DeepDrumpf) March 3, 2016
“The bot is based on an artificial-intelligence algorithm that is trained on just a few hours of transcripts of Trump’s victory speeches and debate performances,” wrote Adam Conner-Simons from the MIT lab, in a blog post introducing Deep Drumpf.
The bot is named after a recent segment on the Last Week Tonight with John Oliver TV show, where Oliver encouraged opponents of Trump to rebrand him by his original family name, “Drumpf”.
Conner-Simmons explained how the bot works:
“The bot creates Tweets one letter at a time. For example, if the bot randomly begins its Tweet with the letter ‘M,’ it is somewhat likely to be followed by an ‘A,’ and then a ‘K,’ and so on until the bot types out Trump’s campaign slogan, ‘Make America Great Again.’ It then starts over for the next sentence and repeats the process until it reaches the 140-character limit.
The Tweetbot’s creator, CSAIL postdoc Bradley Hayes, used techniques from ‘deep-learning,’ a field of artificial intelligence that uses systems called ‘neural networks’ to teach computers to to find patterns on their own. Hayes was inspired by an existing training model that can simulate Shakespeare, as well as a recent report that analysed the presidential candidates’ linguistic patterns to find that Trump speaks at a fourth-grade level.”
As of yet, the real Trump has yet to respond to his Twitter bot, despite Deep Drumpf making one attempt to engage him in conversation.
@realDonaldTrump They're going to be paying right now, and like, absolutely. I’m really rich. Oh I want to support and have them.
— DeepDrumpf (@DeepDrumpf) March 3, 2016
• Artist 3D prints Donald Trump butt plug in protest at rhetoric
