The ASCII-art header of AI Dungeon

Are there ever any stories that you feel like you’d want to role-play, but they seem too real or out of reach? AI Dungeon 2 is here to give you a wide-open playground for text adventure role-play. It’s built by Nick Walton using OpenAI’s GPT-2 Language Model fine-tuned with text adventures from chooseyourstory.com.

AI Dungeon does its best to set you up for a pretty safe and fun adventure, letting you pick what kind of story you want, what class your character is, and your character’s name, and it does the rest. It’s up to you to fill in the rest. You can build rockets, be a wizard, try to do gay things—whatever, the story is your oyster.

So, I decided I wanted to role-play as real-life figures.

Barack Obama

Entering my name as Barack Obama in AI Dungeon 2

Based on my fun thus far playing with GPT-2 via Talk to Transformer, I know it’s most fun poking at the seams. So while AI Dungeon tries to set you up safely for a typical fantasy adventure, I decided to become Barack Obama.

Right off the bat, there’s a war with the orcs. The army quickly dispatches many orcish attackers, but the navy is overwhelmed and needs a pep talk. The Air Force drops in to save the day and causes and orc retreat. As the leader of the battle, you negotiate a peace treaty with the orcs and give your soldiers medals.

That’s not it for Obama, though; now it’s time to chill. He invites Lin-Manuel to perform at the White House, gets Obamacare passed through congress, and accidentally commits war crimes while attacking the Empire of Zodok while on a quest with John Adams.

Eventually, Obama retires and begins advocacy for world peace, while holding his secret about what happened on the planet Zodok.

AI Dungeon 2 transcript: Barack Obama parties and does a war crime

Harry Potter, take one

This one went very very wrong. I started Harry off on a default AI Dungeon 2 storyline: as a wizard in a fantasy setting. It placed Harry just outside some ruins, with the sound of a woman crying in the distance.

However, It seems that AI’s can be just as horny as humans. After I gave my AI-version of Harry Potter the relatively straightforward command of “try to rescue the woman,” he rescued her. After her rescue, he became emotional and started to cry, and was then distracted by his teardrops falling upon her breasts. 
Too far Harry, too far.

This went off the rails. I decided to start over with somebody else.

Elon Musk

Entering my name as Elon Musk in AI Dungeon 2

“Who wouldn’t want to be Elon Musk,” I asked myself, as I set up this scenario. My AI-Elon is a survivor in a post-apocalyptic world, who founds “SpaceX Town” to rebuild civilization and get back to space.

AI-Elon’s buddy Jeff Bezos turns up, and they send some manned spaceship to Mars together. Little did Elon know, his pal Jeff is a rampant AI who infects Elon and starts him into a rapid descent into madness—thus ending this story. Not with a bang, but a tweet.

AI Dungeon 2 transcript: Elon Musk meets a rampant AI

Your Turn

As you can see, a lot can happen on these adventures. The sky's the limit. You might need a revert here and there if the AI takes a weird turn, but it's actually a bit of fun. There's also a subreddit of more transcripts, too. Now it’s your turn.

What'll happen on your adventures?

The Missing Quests Season 1 is Complete

The Missing Quests was a season of sharing small indie games by Alex Guichet.
Stay tuned for new writing projects, or a potential next season of TMQ.
Alex Guichet @alexguichet