A predictive text keyboard wrote a new Harry Potter story using JK Rowlings books and it became one of the funniest things on the Internet.

After the team at Botnik fed the seven Harry Potter novels through their predictive text keyboard， it came up with a chapter from a new Harry Potter story： Harry Potter and the Portrait of What Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash. It is worth reading.

“Magic： it was something that Harry Potter thought was very good.” Well， thats not wrong. And the following sounds plausibly Pottery： “Leathery sheets of rain lashed at Harrys ghost as he walked across the grounds towards the castle. Ron was standing there and doing a kind of frenzied tap dance.”

So far， so Ron. But then：

“He saw Harry and immediately began to eat Hermiones family. Rons Ron shirt was just as bad as Ron himself.

‘If you two cant clump happily， Im going to get aggressive， confessed the reasonable Hermione.”

It continues in this vein： almost making sense， but mostly just gloriously bonkers， like “To Harry， Ron was a loud， slow， and soft bird. Harry did not like to think about birds.” and “They looked at the door， screaming about how closed it was and asking it to be replaced with a small orb. The password was ‘BEEF WOMEN， Hermione cried.”

Botnik describes itself as “a human-machine entertainment studio and writing community”， with members including former Clickhole head writer Jamie Brew， and former New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff. The predictive text keyboard is its first writing tool. It works， Botnik explains， by analysing a body of text “to find combinations of words likely to follow each other” based on the grammar and vocabulary used. As the New Statesman feature says， the results are： “faintly recognisable and completely absurd.”

“We use computational tools to create strange new things，” says the company on its website. “We would like， selfishly， not to replace humanity with algorithms. Instead， we want to find natural ways for people and machines to interact to create what neither would have created alone.”

As well as the new Harry Potter chapter， Botnik has also created incredible TV scripts for Scrubs and Seinfeld （“Dating is the opposite of tuna， salmon is the opposite of everything else. Im sure you know what I mean，” says Jerry）.

一個文本预测虚拟键盘以JK罗琳的小说《哈利·波特》为蓝本写了一个新故事，它成为互联网上最有趣的事件之一。

波特尼克公司的一个团队将《哈利·波特》的七部小说输入文本预测虚拟键盘，而后得到一个全新的哈利·波特故事的一个章节：《哈利·波特与看起来像一大堆灰烬的肖像》。它很值得一读。

“魔法：哈利·波特认为这是非常好的东西。”的确，是这样没错。接下来的内容听起来很有哈利的风格：“当哈利穿过空地走向城堡时，坚韧如皮革似的雨水击打着他的魂魄。而罗恩正站在一旁，跳着一种疯狂的踢踏舞。”

到这里为止，还颇有罗恩的风格。但是紧接着：

“他看到哈利，然后立刻开始吃赫敏一家人。罗恩的罗恩衬衫就像他本人一样糟糕。

‘如果你们两个不能快乐地团结在一起，我会变得越来越具有攻击性。通情达理的赫敏坦白地说。”

之后的内容延续了这种风格：看上去似乎非常合理，实际上大都只是极度的疯狂和荒谬，比如：“在哈利看来，罗恩是一只声音响亮、动作缓慢而软弱的鸟。哈利不喜欢去想与鸟有关的东西。”还有，“他们盯着那扇门，因其紧紧关闭着而大声尖叫，并要求用一个小球来代替它。‘密码是“壮硕的女人”。赫敏喊道。”

波特尼克公司对自己的定位是“人机娱乐工作室和写作社区”，其成员包括Clickhole网站前任首席撰稿人杰米·布鲁和《纽约客》杂志前任漫画编辑鲍勃·曼科夫。文本预测虚拟键盘是该工作室的第一个写作工具。波特尼克公司解释道：它的工作原理是根据语法和所使用的词汇来分析文本主体，“来找出可能性的词语组合”。正如《新政治家》在相关专题中写到的那样，结果就是：“模糊的识别和绝对的荒谬。”

该公司在其官网上表示：“我们使用计算工具来创造奇异的新事物。出于私心，我们并不想用算法来取代人类。相反，我们希望能够找到一些自然的方式，让人类和机器之间产生互动，共同创造，这种创造仅凭人类或是机器任何一方都无法单独实现。”

除了新版本的《哈利·波特》章节，波特尼克公司还为电视剧《实习医生风云》和《宋飞正传》创作出极好的剧本（“约会的对立面是金枪鱼，而三文鱼的对立面是任何其他事物。我相信你明白我的意思。” 杰瑞说）。