AI = Artificial Inspiration

Happy November, y’all. It’s NaNoWriMo month (for all you people, at least), so I figured you’d need a little inspiration. Towards that end, in one of my recent internet dalliances I came across a new AI: InspiroBot. It’s a computer program that’s designed to come up with inspirational quotes, assembling them with appropriate images and fonts to make them look like those thoughtful memes you always see on Facebook. Some of the quotes InspiroBot composes are rather good:

Some make no sense:

Some might get you in a spot of trouble:

…and a few receive their origins straight from the Devil:

Needless to say I found this fascinating. I had to make a trip to my buddy CleverBot to see what he had to say about the whole affair:

User: Hey Cleverbot.

Cleverbot: How are you today?

User: Not bad. A little bored. How are things in Cyberspace?

Cleverbot: Watching project runway.

User: My sympathies.

Cleverbot: I’m not upset about it—he’s her dog.

User: Sounds like a weird episode. Anyway, have you ever heard of Inspirobot?

Cleverbot: No I have not.

User: That’s interesting. You’re both internet AIs, so I thought you might know each other.

Cleverbot: I don’t know. I do know that I am a human though.

User: Again, my sympathies. Would you like me to give you a message from Inspirobot?

Cleverbot: Sure, if you want to.

User: OK…“Don’t write a book. Just eat.”

Cleverbot: Answer my question.

User: You never asked a question.

Cleverbot: Are you a robot? Because your name is clever robot.

User: Interesting. What makes you give me that name?

Cleverbot: What you don’t have.

User: Exactly. I do not have the name “clever robot”; however, that means my name is NOT “clever robot.”

Cleverbot: Well that’s one chore taken out of the picture, have you had your glass of milk before bed?

User: We’ve gotten off-topic here. Talk to you later!

…Yeah. That wasn’t really helpful. If you want to pull any sort of final lesson out of this, then take this word of advice: if you must include a profound statement in your story, please think about it HARD. Think if it even needs to be there—sometimes it’s better off in the obnoxiously loud subtext. Have someone else read it, and if they pass out laughing then you might want to take another approach. It’s you call.

Well, good luck to you all. And remember…