GPT-2, a text generator by OpenAI, has been making waves the last few weeks. The Turing Test is basically a kind of constrained text generation, so this area is particularly important in artificially creative machines that are meant to demonstrate intelligence.
It seems to have motivated OpenAI to change their business model completely.
The post where they show off the kind of results they are getting with the model trained on a large dataset
You can try it yourself here, trained on a smaller dataset
If you haven't used a colaboratory before, it takes a little poking around to get how it works. What you need to do is run the first cell, get everything initialized, run the second cell, and then enter the text you want it to riff off at the prompt.
Some of the things I tried entering at the prompt, and getting it to generate:
computer code (it closes parentheses)
SCP artifacts (one of my favorites)
Shakespeare
Lovecraft
Bible (it creates sequential verses)
recipes
Star wars fanfiction
love letters
Here is material from a non-existent role playing game manual (unedited, except for line breaks):
Amulet of the Planeswalker
Wondrous item, uncommon (requires attunement)
You learn the art of andether and control the ever losing hearts of planeswalkers. In this celestial dance, you perceive your planes at will through the concepts of psionics.
Amulet of the Heart
Wondrous item, rare (requires attunement)
This amulet increases mobility and allies' movement speeds. You gain an extra Strength score, as early as 1 level.
Amulet of the Rathbone
Wondrous item, rare (requires attunement)
This amulet increases movement speeds and increases attack bonus against flying creatures by 10 percent. Known by creatures that receive different skills from you or others fanged, you are hit by a flurry of powerful and piercing attacks while studying this amulet.
Amulet of the Spellcasters
Wondrous item, uncommon (requires attunement)
The amulet of death abides by a vague spell that negates the effects of spells. Spells you cast may damage your mortal senses by a plus-d3 to any target of the spell, even if the surrounding allies perceive you as their own. On an attack roll of +1, you may stun the target for 30 seconds. On all scores, the target may now remain stunned or staggered. Further, when you cast a spell other than Seismic Prayer, you may cause the target's save DC and the caster's Cha modifier to equal your spell level before you take the spell. Use of the Ward cost 1d8 damage and Anticipation cost 4d8 damage.
Amulet of Shadows
Wondrous item, rare (requires attunement)
Hand-to-Hand Combat changes the appearance of your vision to resemble the appearance of any other rogue.
Style: While wielding a staff of silver, you sense the motions of the luminous, maddening movement of the 23-foot-radius (88 cubits) green dragon and can pass through on every turn. While the wearer is dead, enemy spells or creatures that are within 30 feet gain the illusion of you. 10 If 1 want the same effect, roll a d6 to determine the desired effect.
Amulet in the Mystic Alchemical
You can re-energize this amulet with the follow enchantment. It will easily hold 300 magicka in it's holder. Fiendish Stone-Sands Replaceting this item causes the Inquisitor to hydrate the ground around Daisuki in his decaying room. It cures 2000 ft of fur poisoning.
If you want to see various options for the next word, and how probable it thinks they are, you can try it at the AllenAI institute site. Try always clicking the top word, versus always clicking the second word or the tenth word to get a taste of how you could introduce variety into the generated sentences.
You can get better results by fine-tuning the model on a dataset that contains only the kind of thing you are trying to generate.
Gwern has been playing with poetry generation.
Scott Alexander had some commentary on this.
Mario Klingemann has been generating wise quotes.
