The good people (and robot brains) over at Botnik Studios, creators of such wonderful neural network-generated monstrosities as Harry Potter and the Portrait of What Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash, are back at it again. This time, they’ve turned their attention on something already incomprehensible enough that a computer-created version is nearly indistinguishable from reality: the list of bands to play at Coachella.
For anyone as out of touch with what the average Coachella attendee is into as I am, reading Botnik’s list is a perfect mirror of the experience of reading the actual list of bands playing at Coachella—so much so that, for a minute, I thought they might have done the same thing last year. But no, this is an actual list of make-believe bands, as opposed to one that just sounds made up.
You can see the full list of AI creations, which resulted from training a neural network on thousands of real band names, in Botnik’s tweet below:
Announcing your 2018 COACHELLA LINEUP, generated by a neural network trained on thousands of band names: https://t.co/EskuBWOdfy pic.twitter.com/J06jgc3x2R
— Botnik Studios (@botnikstudios) January 23, 2018
But a few favorites are Ben Sex, Fistopia, Beth Factory, Labratross, Jonathan Mushboy, Smushy Twin, Max Beaf, Boy/Boys, Beachfeel, Billions of Mario, Mega Bathman, Boneo, and Here Comes the Death. All of these would make Andy Dwyer proud (and confuse any potential Mouse Rat fans), but personally, I’m especially partial to the brilliant pun that is Fistopia.
Truly, is there no feat of the human imagination that modern technology cannot accomplish? We need to set up a Paul Bunyan-style, man vs. machine face-off with Chris Pratt:
(via Max Eddy on Twitter, image: NBC)
Want more stories like this? Become a subscriber and support the site!
—The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—
