If you’ve been procrastinating at work today—which, let’s be honest, between sneakily farting out your lunch and aggressively carouseling between social networks, that’s exactly what’s been going on—then you’ve probably noticed another completely useless bot doing the rounds online. Microsoft’s Caption Bot (which comes a handful of weeks after their supremely racist tween-speaking Twitter program became a Hitler loving sex robot in less than 24 hours) is the latest exercise in a line of experiments wherein the accountants at Microsoft have shoved some cash into a leaf-blower, blindfolded one of their employees, and asked them to fire it toward a new project for no reason other than the fact they have billions of dollars to pleasure themselves with.
This time, the idea is that you upload a photo, and then the bot tries to generate a caption based upon what its algorithm sees. You can then rate how accurate the bot’s description is, and it learns from the rating, thus creating a better caption next time around. It’s kinda like a benevolent, educational game—the robot receives our talent and knowledge, and in return we’ve been granted a form of light-entertainment that can help diminish any existential crises we’re currently having about AI taking over the world. You send the bot a picture of a baseball player, it responds with this:
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All screenshots via Caption Bot
So far, the captions are close to semi-accurate. If you put a photo of Kanye West wearing a suit and tie in there, for instance, the response is: “I think it’s Kanye West wearing a suit and tie.” If it’s something more abstract, like the album cover for Radiohead’s OK Computer, the response is less clear, like: “I am not really confident, but I think it’s a group of people riding skis on a train track.” Pretty straightforward, right?
As fans of popular culture and welcome guinea pigs for new technology, we thought we’d play around with the latest product to crawl from Microsoft’s room full of money to test how effective it is at doing its job. Obviously we started with a picture of Drake, because Drake is the most recognizable and directoried face in 2016. If the bot cannot recognize Drake, then it is a garbage piece of technology.
Okay, so the bot does not recognize Drake—that’s clear—but did it just absolutely fry him in the process? Who makes a bot in 2016 that recognizes Shawn Wayans but is unaware of Drake? This must be a mistake. No piece of technology has ever served up an own so smooth. We tried again.
Right, so it can’t recognize Drake’s face, but it can tell the difference between different video game controllers? Something about this technology reeks. Not in the sense that it’s garbage, but in the sense that it feels like it’s already sweated it out in the dark corners of the rap internet, where sneak-disses have been thrown toward Drake since the 6 God first fell into the grand sands of time. Or maybe it’s a mistake. Three is the lucky number, isn’t it? So here you go sweet bot: Here’s one more image of Drizzy’s smooth, contoured face to test what your intentions really are…
Okay. I see you, soon-to-be-sentient technology. I see you. This is a form of shade that’s descended from the grand lodge of sneak-dissing.
What the fuck, dude. Did Meek Mill create you? Is this bot Meek Mill? See, by this point it’s clear that by mentioning a “cell phone” the bot low-key knows that this is Drake, and the bot low-key wants you to know it knows fine well this is Drake, just to give its military grade owns even greater weight. What makes it even better is how the bot sounds so self-conscious and apologetic while delivering own after own, like its frowning sadly while absolutely ruining you in front of your pals. Is this the future? Is this the next Christopher Nolan film? AI that takes over the world by just humiliating us all?
Okay, by now it seems pretty clear that Microsoft have created a Drake-hating bot under the guise of a picture caption bot. Dave Attell? First you mistake Drake for Shawn Wayans and now you’re just throwing out percentages of any random comedian who also has facial hair? You know what the bot is trying to say here: It’s trying to say “I’m not even culturally ignorant, see, I know Dave Attell. But I’ve never heard of you (bitch).” Dave Attell, by the way, looks like this.
Cold. Ice cold. You killed him, bot. We were only weeks away from Views and you did it. You killed Drake.
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