MetaphorIsMyBusiness

The @MetaphorMagnet bot, run by the Creative Language System Group is one of the more sophisticated bots using Twitter. It uses a large variety of techniques that revolve around metaphor generation and a Breaking-Bad-inspired character arc generator that writes transitions between character states.

The Creative Language System Group is part of the WHIM project. Their projects are good examples of computational creativity, which is a field dedicated to making computers creative or enhance human creativity.

The bot (and its associated back-end services) is very good at what it does. While a few of the things it suggest are banal or nonsensical, there’s a lot of compelling story-seeds in its feed. I’ve occasionally used some of its suggestions as inspiration for creative projects.

Part of what makes it so effective is that it combines a ton of different approaches, giving it a multitude of ways to explore its central themes.