Botnik Studios
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Technology, Comedy |
| Founded | 2016 |
| Founder | Jamie Brew, Bob Mankoff |
| Headquarters | Seattle, New York , United States |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Jamie Brew, Bob Mankoff, Elle O'Brien, Joseph Parker |
| Products | Predictive text keyboard for comedic content creation |
| Website | botnik |
Botnik Studios represents a creative collective that highlights projects from the Botnik community, which is composed of artists and developers employing technology to craft comedic content. Their work is accessible through the Botnik main website.
Features
At the core of Botnik's offerings lies a predictive text keyboard designed to propose word suggestions derived from previously inputted text. By examining an individual author’s complete works, this tool generates word sequences that mirror the author’s style, resulting in content that maintains an authentic voice while delivering a humorous and absurd twist.
History
The company was established by Jamie Brew, a former writer for ClickHole and The Onion, alongside Bob Mankoff, who served as humor editor at Esquire and was previously the cartoon editor at The New Yorker. In August 2017, the team expanded to include computational scientist Elle O'Brien and creative developer Joseph Parker. While Brew and O'Brien operate out of Seattle, Mankoff and Parker are based in New York.
In 2017, Botnik transitioned into a community platform by enabling users to download their predictive keyboard, experiment with it, and share their creations on the site. That same year in July, Botnik received funding through the Amazon/Techstars Accelerator Program, recognizing its technology’s potential integration with Amazon’s Alexa smart assistant.
Broader attention came when actor Zach Braff posted a video of himself delivering a monologue in the style of Scrubs, generated by Botnik, in December 2017.
Additionally, their AI-produced work titled Harry Potter and the Portrait of What Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash earned fourth place among the top ten internet highlights of 2017 as ranked by The Guardian.