#zdk-12

Right now, a whole lot of people on Tumblr are obsessed with an artificial intelligence named ZDK-12. Or, more likely, a fake artificial intelligence.

Luckily this is one of those situations where reality may actually be more interesting than the “hoax.”

When we say “artificial intelligence,” we’re not talking full-on Blade Runner here. ZDK-12 (also known as IRIS, or “Inquiry Response Intelligence System”) behaves more like a Tumblr version of “intelligent” chat programs like Cleverbot or Jabberwacky.

Within two days the ZDK-12 blog had supposedly gained more than 22,000 followers, charming people with whimsical answers to askbox questions. Everyone loves a cute robot—just ask China’s Jade Rabbit moon rover.

Illustration via sailorleo / Tumblr

Illustration via sonira-art.tumblr / Tumblr

On its own, all this ZDK-12/IRIS fanart is cute, but not enormously unusual. After all, Tumblr users have been known to create fandoms and art memes from basically anything. The thing that sets ZDK-12’s followers apart is their obsessive attention to detail, with a whole community of people analysing every single post for clues. One of the most dedicated examples is the way people have been running ZDK-12’s audio posts through a spectrogram, discovering that the resulting graphs sometimes appear to show coded messages in Roman numerals and binary code. Here’s the spectrogram for this unintelligible audio post:

Illustration via blackle-mori / Tumblr

In many ways, ZDK-12 has more in common with horse_ebooks than your typical Tumblr meme, with many of its readers theorising that the entire set-up is part of an alternate reality game (ARG). And after two weeks online, this idea is getting some serious traction.

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