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AI makes up pie names using Harry Potter fan fiction

Care for some yummy Snape Pie with Cheese? Or perhaps Mudblood Mincemeat Pie?

Bonnie Burton
Journalist Bonnie Burton writes about movies, TV shows, comics, science and robots. She is the author of the books Live or Die: Survival Hacks, Wizarding World: Movie Magic Amazing Artifacts, The Star Wars Craft Book, Girls Against Girls, Draw Star Wars, Planets in Peril and more! E-mail Bonnie.
Bonnie Burton
2 min read
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Save room for some Tweezers, Olives and Seafood Apple Pie. 

Janelle Shane

The holiday season means festive pies are usually part of the menu. Pumpkin pie and mincemeat pie are typical desserts. But perhaps it's time to consider having a slice of Onion Cassette Pie.

That particular pie idea was thought up by artificial intelligence. In her latest experiment, AI researcher Janelle Shane gave a neural network around 2,000 names of existing pie recipes along with some Harry Potter fan fiction to see what would happen. 

"I have ways of messing with the neural net," Shane wrote in her blog on Tuesday, just ahead of Thanksgiving. "I can increase the chaos level of the text it's generating. When I'm asking it to generate more text, I can give it a few example pies and ask it to add to the list; or I can give it much weirder text… a bit of Harry Potter fan fiction."

That's how her neural network came up with wacky pie names such as Fog-Crust Pecan Pie, Stimulant Cherry Pie and Snape Pie with Cheese.

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Onion Cassette Pie sounds like it'd be a hit with retro music fans.

Janelle Shane

"They don't sound exactly delicious to me, but maybe this advanced artificial intelligence knows something we don't," Shane wrote on her blog. "After all, it read most of the internet, including the cooking blogs."

Not only does Shane's neural network come up with bizarre pie concoctions, but it can also write some rather entertaining, pie-themed Harry Potter fan fiction as well. Here's a sample. 

Harry glared at Snape.

"No, I'm not even talking about the boy here. You're talking about the duplicate."

"Fine. Then I'll get the rest of the ingredients."

So then, they got canned fruit and whipped cream and whipped cream and whipped cream and whipped cream and whipped cream and whipped cream and whipped cream.

But one thing was for sure: there was no trace of rum.

There was.

J.K. Rowling, look out!

In addition to new pie names and unusual Harry Potter pie fan fiction, Shane previously trained her neural network to come up with unusual cookie names, Dungeons & Dragons creatures and Valentine heart candy sayings.

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