Lyrics parody swaps one set of words that accompany a melody with a new set of words, preserving the number of syllables per line and the rhyme scheme. Lyrics parody generation is a challenge for controllable text generation. We show how a specialized sampling procedure, combined with backward text generation with XLNet can produce parody lyrics that reliably meet the syllable and rhyme scheme constraints. We introduce the Weird AI Yankovic system and provide a case study evaluation. We conclude with societal implications of neural lyric parody generation.

NSFW Warning: This story may contain links to and descriptions or images of explicit sexual acts. If you want to understand the myriad issues concerning sex robots that humanity needs to grapple with, you have two options. You can either spend several years studying for a PhD in either of those fields, or you can sit down in front of your TV. Many of the preoccupations that were on display at the third International Congress on Love and Sex with Robots are ones that have already been explored in pop culture. From Futurama to Westworld, going back to Weird Science and The Stepford Wives, the questions that academics are currently pondering have already been played out, fictionally at least, on TV.

Frankenstein was, at the time of its publication, practically sui generis--a new kind of book, working around the edges of science and story. But if you look at the social and scientific thought surrounding its young creator, Mary Shelley, as she conceived and wrote this book in 1816, Frankenstein's intensity and strangeness begin to make a new kind of sense.

This week has been AI week here at Engadget, which means we've been examining the variety of ways that artificial intelligence is changing our technological landscape and our society as a whole -- from meeting the bots that play Doom to looking at how AI could change the future of combat, policing and our roles in the workplace to asking why digital assistants often default to female voices and personalities, we've been all-AI, all week. It's been pretty fun, actually. Over in the community section, a quick heads up to our commenters: We've rolled out a "Censor" feature in comment threads which allows us to remove a comment that violates our community guidelines without removing the replies and responses to that comment. So far we've only had to use this feature a handful of times -- largely due to name-calling or cursing -- but this at least gives us the ability to keep a conversation even if the person who started it was a bad actor. Also, if you're registering to be a Public Access member (which you can do here, hint, hint), please be aware that you must answer the specific registrations questions that are asked and please do not answer with joke replies.