Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

MIT Researchers Trained AI To Write Horror Stories Based On 140,000 Reddit Posts (qz.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the machines-with-brains dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: Shelley is an AI program that generates the beginnings of horror stories, and it's trained by original horror fiction posted to Reddit. Designed by researchers from MIT Media Lab, Shelley launched on Twitter on Oct. 21. Shelley, named after Frankenstein author Mary Shelley, is interactive. After the program tweets a few opening lines, it asks people on Twitter to continue the story, and if the story is popular, it responds to those responses. Using information from 140,000 stories from Reddit's r/nosleep, Shelley produces story beginnings that range in creepiness, and in quality. There's some classic "scary stuff," like a narrator who thinks she's alone and then sees eyes in the dark, but also premises one can only imagine are Reddit-user-inspired, like family porn.

8 of 37 comments (clear)

  1. I can't imagine by Travco · · Score: 5, Funny

    Anything more horrible than reading that many Reddit posts

    1. Re:I can't imagine by bettodavis · · Score: 4, Funny

      This is how Skynet's genocidal hatred for humanity comes to be.

    2. Re: I can't imagine by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 5, Funny

      "I have no text-to-speech module and I must scream."

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
  2. Yeah, sounds like a good idea... by bettodavis · · Score: 3, Funny

    To use /r/spacedicks for training your future AI overlords.

    What could go wrong?

  3. What do you call that? by Chas · · Score: 2

    The Aristocrats!

    *BOW*

    --


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!
  4. and I can't imagine by n329619 · · Score: 2

    Anything more horrible than seeing a guy forcing an AI read that many Reddit posts.

    #ThinkOfTheShelley

  5. Re:I know where this ends... by squiggleslash · · Score: 2

    No, this is Reddit. The monster is inevitably a "Fat Woman Stuffing Her Face With A Donut".

    The victim? Waitstaff, who the Fat Woman has been rude to.

    --
    You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  6. Reddit: We Know Horror by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 2

    I don't have anything to do with Reddit, but from what I've heard the whole place is a 'horror story'.