Say hello to Barp Moon, Commander Pony, and many more neural network-designed My Little Ponies

With names like Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie, the characters of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic sound a bit like their names were picked by throwing two random darts at a Lisa Frank folder. But now, one science-minded fan of the show has created a more technological way of creating new pony friends for the internet to freak out over. Using “more than 1,500 names from the My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic Wiki” and a program that “looks at examples of text and learns to imitate them,” science blogger Janelle Shane created a long list of new pony names, most of which sound OK and only some of which sound like barf on hooves.

Names like “Sunshine Star,” “Mint Flower,” and “Cherry Curls” all sound like plausible ponies that could easily appear on the show for a two-episode arc. But they also sound like they could be in the first draft of some brony fan fiction. They’re just a bit go-to. Now, “Sunder Bright,” “Command Pony,” and “Steel Roller,” all carry a bit more gravitas, whereas “Sob Dancer” sounds like a goth pony that teaches the other characters how to roll their own cigarettes.

Things get interesting when we start imagining the adventures of “Dunder Dort,” “Barp Moon,” and “Apple Apple.” It’s at this point that the pony-obsessed AI moves beyond the safe, expected world of MLP and really starts to spread its creative wings. Then, like a TV writer still at the office at 4 a.m., banging their head against the wall, the computer starts scraping the bottom of the barrel. “Uh…shit, I don’t know… Blueberry Pants? What about… Apple Ronch? Is that something?”

Apparently, this neural net wasn’t afraid to work blue either. At the end of her post, Shane claims the program created a short list of names “that would definitely not appear in a kid’s TV show.” If you’re the kind of person who absolutely needs to know what those lewd names are, she’s willing to email them to you.

[via Boing Boing]