Botnik Studios is an entertainment group developed to exhibit work created by the Botnik community, a writer's society of artists and developers who incorporate technology in the creation of comedy. This content is published on the ''Botnik'' homepage.

Features

Botnik's main tool is a predictive text keyboard, similar to one used by a smartphone. It offers options of words to type based on what has been previously entered, meaning that if the tool has analyzed a body of text it will find combinations of words likely to be used by a particular author whose text has been 'scraped' by the system. The result generally sounds almost authentic in that it is recognizable but ridiculous enough to be considered funny by readers.

History

The program was developed by Jamie Brew, a former '' ClickHole'' and ''

The Onion ''The Onion'' is an American digital media company and newspaper organization that publishes satirical articles on international, national, and local news. The company is currently based in Chicago, but originated as a weekly print publication ...

'' writer, and Bob Mankoff, who is humor editor at ''

Esquire Esquire (, ; abbreviated Esq.) is usually a courtesy title. In the United Kingdom, ''esquire'' historically was a title of respect accorded to men of higher social rank, particularly members of the landed gentry above the rank of gentleman ...

'' and former cartoon editor of

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...

. In August 2017 they were joined by computational scientist Elle O'Brien and creative developer Joseph Parker. Brew and O'Brien are based in Seattle and Mankoff and Parker work in New York. In 2017 Botnik began referring to themselves as an open community, meaning Botnik users can download the predictive keypad, experiment with the tool and display their outcomes on the community page of the Botnik website. In July of that year they received a grant from the

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...

/ Techstars Accelerator Program thanks to being a startup whose technology could realistically improve Amazon's smart speaker assistant, Alexa. Botnik became better known when

Zach Braff Zachary Israel Braff (born April 6, 1975) is an American actor and filmmaker. He portrayed J.D. (Scrubs), John Michael "J.D." Dorian on the NBC/American Broadcasting Company, ABC television series ''Scrubs (TV series), Scrubs'' (2001–2010), for ...

, the actor who plays J.D. on the medical comedy series '' Scrubs'', shared a recording of himself reading a ''Scrubs''-style monologue written by the Botnik system in December 2017. Botnik's ''Harry Potter and the Portrait of What Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash'' was ranked number four in the list of ten best internet moments in 2017 by ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

''.

References

External links

* {{Official website, http://www.botnik.org American companies established in 2016 American comedy websites Companies based in Seattle Internet properties established in 2016