Most people know about the new Twitterbot with A.I. meant to imitate Donald Trump's speech patterns, but how does it stack up to the real person? We've taken a closer look at how the tweets from the program compare with tweets from the presidential candidate.
Named @DeepDrumpf, the new Twitterbot creates letters one letter at a time. For example, if the bot randomly begins its tweet with the letter "M," this is likely to be followed by an "A," and then a "K" and so on until it types out Trump's campaign slogan, "Make America Great Again." It then starts the next sentence until it hits a 140 character limit.
With that said, the @DeepDrumpf's tweets don't always make complete sense. However, they are usually partially coherent.
"Trump's language tends to be more simplistic, so I figured that, as a modeling problem, he would be the most manageable candidate to study," said Bradley Hayes, CSAIL postdoc who created the Twitterbot. "The algorithm essentially learns an underlying structure from all the data it gets, and then comes up with different combinations of the data that reflect the structure that it was taught."
The "deep-learning" techniques that the Twitterbot use involving using systems called "neural networks" to teach computers to find patterns on their own. Hayes was actually inspired by an existing training model that can simulate Shakespeare, as well as a recent report that analyzed the presidential candidates' linguistic patterns and found that Trump speaks at a fourth-grade level.
It's not surprising that with this simplicity in mind, Hayes hoped to create a Twitterbot that accurately imitated Trump's speeches. He actually "feeds" Trump's words into the program so that it can learn Trump's speech patterns. Over time, the Twitterbot will, in theory, more accurately imitate Trump.
But how does the Twitterbot actually stack up against the real Trump's tweets? That's a good question. It looks as if the Twitterbot uses more disjointed language than Trump, and is actually more aggressive in his tweets (see below for a few examples).
@realDonaldTrump: We cannot let the failing REPUBLICAN ESTABLISHMENT, who could not stop Obama (twice), ruin the MOVEMENT with millions of $'s in false ads!
@DeepDrumpf: [#MichiganPrimary] because, it'll be. I win most of this, with these people interested in Washington, D.C., those Republican potatoes.
@realDonaldTrump: I have brought millions of people into the Republican Party, while the Dems are going down. Establishment wants to kill this movement!
@DeepDrumpf: [@FoxNews] That's when we become a country that's unsalvageable. They have losers. I'm against the lobbyists. I am very important right now.
@realDonaldTrump: Because of me, the Republican Party has taken in millions of new voters, a record. If they are not careful, they will all leave. Sad!
@DeepDrumpf: Mark my words. We're going to beat ISIS. Come replace the big lie, Obamacare. Believe me.
While the new Twitterbot is trying to follow Trump's language patterns, it obviously still needs some work. With that said, it could potentially be improved in the future, and does present a live example of what could be worked on.
