【Pihit】

If you're a craft beer connoisseur -- or Pihiteven just an occasional drinker -- you've likely noticed that names for new brews are getting out of hand. Likely in order to distance themselves from traditional, European beer names such as Franziskaner Royal, the new breed of craft beer makers are going with increasingly odd names such as Stone Ruination IPA.

My all-time favorite, and I did not make this up, is a beer called "Evil Twin Bringing a Gun to a Knife Fight."

So what happens when you employ a neural network to create new craft beer names? Well, pretty much the same thing.

Researcher Janelle Shane did it by feeding a neural network a bunch of beer names from BeerAdvocate's database -- the project was initiated by Gizmodo's Ryan Mandelbaum -- and the AI came up with a bunch of names which mostly sound very odd, just like real craft beer names.

Some examples include Indian Pale Ale names like Dang River, Toe Deal, Earth Pump, Heaven Cat, and Heart Compost, all of which (with possible exception of Toe Deal) I'd devour in a second. Strong Pale Ale and Amber Ale names the AI has conjured are even stranger, with highlights being Slambertangeriss, Brother Panty Tripel, The Vunker the Finger, Thrennt Rem Wine Barrel Aged Monkay Tripel, Gate Rooster, Rickin Organic Red Deaath, and River Smush Hoppy Amber Ale. In the stouts category, my favorites include Sir Coffee, Shock State, Single Horder, Avidberry and Pimperdiginistic The Blacksmith W/ Cherry Stout.

Seriously, if you're running a brewery and need a name, this list might actually be useful. You can see the rest of the names here; ping Shane and she'll send you a list with a hundred more names.

This is not the first time Shane has employed a neural network to come up with weird names. Her previous efforts include inventing new Star Wars characters, Star Wars planets, and bad Broadway musicals.

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