Thomas Winters

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SamsonBots

Code
View SamsonBots
Solo project launched in 2017-09
Tags: Computational Humor Artificial Intelligence Humor

The SamsonBots are six independent TwitterBots based on the characters of the children's TV show Samson & Gert.

Each bot portrays a different character and performs variations on the character's catchphrases. The bots are constantly conversing with each other over Twitter, in a way, having never-ending adventures together.

Table of Contents

SamsonBot & GertBot

On the TV show, Samson is a talking dog who mispronounces words and names, after which his owner, Gert, corrects him. They are also known for their popular songs, known by heart by all Flemish children born in the '90s.

The SamsonBot will always mispronounce one of the longest words of another tweet, as well as the name of the Twitter user, after which GertBot will correct him and tell him a dictionary definition of the word.

The mispronunciation is achieved by finding word combinations with a low weighted Levenshtein distance (with vowels being more important than consonants). The explanation of the words is done by looking up the word on Wiktionary and following links until a proper definition is found.

SamsonBot will also sometimes sing lyrics of Samson & Gert songs, with another rhyming word instead, after which GertBot will also correct him.

Due to many people talking with SamsonBot and asking him questions*, he also answers to yes/no questions in a vague way, similar to a Magic 8-ball.

BurgemeesterBot

Burgemeester Modest is the mayor of the village of Samson & Gert. He is known for giving generic, bland speeches, usually of the form: "to everybody who came over: congratulations, to everyone who didn't, also congratulations".

BurgemeesterBot takes this pattern of making generic speeches by taking an action and reversing it in the second sentence, congratulating both categories.

This is achieved by searching for relevant actions from Wikihow and from the national news. The bot inverts the actions by finding antonyms on Wiktionary or using some generic rules to invert certain actions.

AlbertoBot

Alberto Vermicelli is the local hairdresser who usually eats all of Samson & Gert's snacks. He also corrects people when they call him by his real name (Alberto).

AlbertoBot follows any Twitter follower back, and responds when they mention him, "Albert" or any type of food. He uses smulweb.nl to determine whether any word is something edible or not.

Octaafbot

Octaaf is the local shop owner on the Samson & Gert show. He constantly brags that any action other characters mention is his specialty, by quoting that his daughter thinks he's amazing at it.

OctaafBot thus picks up on actions other characters mention and tells them in his typical way how talented he is at those actions.

JeannineBot

Jeannine is the mother of Octaaf, usually telling everybody that she is better than his son in the things he claims to be great at, and giving random advice to people.

JeannineBot achieves this by using the advice at the bottom of related Wikihow articles. She also inverts some words of the given advice if the action contains negative words, mostly for comedic purposes.

Interaction

The bots select a couple of random moments each day to tweet. They always reply to people tagging them, unless the tweet contains offensive words. With a certain (small) probability, they also reply to each other, creating interesting long interactions.

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