The neural network generated pickup lines that are actually kind of adorable

So it occurred to me that the same neural network framework I’ve trained on recipes, Pokemon, superhero names, and Irish tune names might be able to write pick up lines as well.

Gathering the dataset was much more painful than I had expected - I hadn’t really read many of these before, and most were obscene, or aggressive, or kind of insulting. I began to regret the whole project.

But although the neural network figured out the basic forms “You must be a … because….” or “Hey baby, wanna…” it never learned to generate the worst lines - most of these were based on wordplay that it didn’t have a chance of reproducing.

Instead, it began to generate lines that varied from incomprehensible to surreal to kind of adorable: