Phoenix Wright Bot Turns Internet Arguments Into Court Cases
Reddit truly is unpredictable. One day you might find a heartwarming tale about someone getting a PS5 from a friend, and on another day you'll learn that there's an entire community dedicated to scamming scalpers. In order to help capture all of this chaos, a Reddit user recently created a bot that takes spicy Reddit arguments and turns them into full-fledged animated courtroom scenes from the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney series.
Micah Price, the inventor of the bot, came up with the idea in just three short days. A video of the hilarious end result was uploaded onto Price's YouTube account on Jan. 17. The bot took a fight between two users on r/confession, replacing the Redditors with Phoenix Wright and his rival Miles Edgeworth.
During an interview with Mashable, Price discussed the process of making the bot. "I wasn't sure if it would be popular so I didn't want to spend much longer on it. I used Python and a bunch of computer vision and machine learning libraries. It's uber buggy at the moment though," he said.
The bot works by taking note of the tone and score of a comment made in a thread. The bot will first find the top comments on the thread, and then pit it against a comment that got a ton of down votes. After processing the information, the bot will automatically link the video in the thread.
Redditors can use the bot by typing "!objectionbot" or "!objection-bot" into a thread on a specific list of subreddits. While Price is still working out some bugs, he plans on keeping the bot up for some time. "Only costs me $10 a month to run so no harm leaving it for a couple months. If it's anything like my other side projects I'll just end up abandoning it though," Price said. "Although maybe someone else will pick it up, it's open source."
The Ace Attorney entries are a series of visual novel games in which the player takes on the role of a defense attorney during an investigation. The series is well known for its memorable cast of characters and excellent writing. The last game to be localized outside of Japan was the 2016's Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney — Spirit of Justice, an entry that was released for Nintendo 3DS and mobile devices. While there were rumors of a possible Western release of the Japanese-exclusive Great Ace Attorney entries, Capcom has yet to confirm any details.