DeepDrumpf Twitterbot: An AI system is impersonating Donald Trump to hilarious effect

The Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has introduced the world to an endless supply of choice opinions and phrases during his controversial campaign. In fact, his rhetoric has become so recognisable that a Twitterbot has been able to adapt popular Trump-isms with hilarious consequences.

DeepDrumf is the work of Bradley Hayes, a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who has used deep learning techniques from AI neural networks, designed to recognise patterns in human language, to effectively mimic the former venture capitalist.

Amazingly, the bot's artificial intelligence algorithm has only been trained on a few hours' worth of Trump's candid oratory (which is more than enough for anyone, really), taken from transcripts of victory speeches and public debates. The result is a broken mess of stock Trump references and opinions, although, incredibly, they still sound like something that he might actually say.

"Trump's language tends to be more simplistic, so I figured that, as a modelling problem, he would be the most manageable candidate to study," said Hayes, a researcher in MIT's computer science and artificial intelligence lab. "Much of my actual robotics research deals with these types of modelling techniques. I thought this would be a good way to learn more about some of the concepts, and have a little bit of fun in the process."

Well, the internet is certainly having fun at Trump's expense thanks to the Twitter account. Here are a few more of our favourites at IBTimes UK taken directly from DeepDrumpf's Twitter feed:

Donald Trump and internet hilarity are now almost synonymous. After Trump's significant gains became apparent during the announcements of the Super Tuesday results there was a spike on Google Trends for variations on the search term "how can I move to Canada?".

#MakeDonaldDrumpfAgain also trended worldwide on Twitter following the hammering Trump received from HBO comedian John Oliver on Last Week Tonight. It would seem that Hayes was one of the many to have enjoyed the harsh words directed at the former real estate mogul, naming the Twitter account DeepDrumpf, a nod to Oliver's references about Trump's ancestral family name.