Overview
Caprica is a system for constructing hypothetical conversations between two people based only on their (independent) chat history. The system is trained on a large corpus of chat history data, which can then be used to construct plausible responses to arbitrary prompts. By interleaving prompts and responses across the trained models of two individuals who otherwise have never spoken with each other, we can automatically fabricate a plausible approximation of how a conversation might transpire between them.
In the case of this project, the multi-megabyte AOL Instant Messenger chat logs of the two project collaborators were used to create the response model. The chat logs were quite old, which means they reflect a much younger and immature manifestation of each collaborator — often yielding cringe-inducing results.
A sample conversation is shown below:
Edgwired: what are we lying about? obrigado: the royal you Edgwired: we had to transfer them as files rather than as music obrigado: hah Edgwired: heh obrigado: wtf? Edgwired: music is portable obrigado: J.R. Rodale Edgwired: plus obrigado: additionaly Edgwired: cool to hang out obrigado: all this time coco Edgwired: this is what i’m leaning towards obrigado: i have assumed Edgwired: LOL obrigado: haha Edgwired: what monitor? obrigado: right Edgwired: that one is pretty good obrigado: that the version of remind me Edgwired: fuck it obrigado: actually it is Edgwired: serious
Additional notes on process and implementation are available in a related post.
Collaborators
Components
- Custom software
- Large corpus of AIM chat logs from at least two individuals