Epic Twitter Bots!

Bots often get a bad name because for most people they are these invisible things that are often mischievous and malicious. That’s because most of the bots we hear about are, but there are millions of other bots doing great work.

Sometimes their work is whimsical and fun like these:

There’s Museum Bot:

Bot’s Bio: I am a bot that tweets a random high-res Open Access image from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, four times a day.

There’s EveryWord:

Bot’s Bio: Twittered every word in the English language. Task began in 2007 and completed in 2014. Buy the book!

There’s Great Art Bot:

Bot’s Bio: Computer-generated art, updated four times a day.

 

There’s Olivia Taters:

This bot mashes up results for Twitter searches for adverbs.

Bot’s Bio: ugh dad

It makes me wonder what the future of bots like these will be? Could they be used in politics and conflict resolution situations to find every point of view and then filter which would be most applicable to all parties? Or could we use this as a teaching aid so that each person can get taught in a completely different way so that when people work together they can create incredibly creative solutions that no one would have expected?

Unfortunately, it’s much more likely that they will, or already are, being used to target advertising in every form and combination possible, and then results filtered and refined to yield the most profitable results.

It’s still the Wild West, and people are playing with whimsical toys that could be the technology that potential future infrastructure gets built on. Exciting times.