---
title: "This Delightful AI Generates Words That Sound Real But Aren’t"
description: "Have you ever heard of a lachetous vine? Maybe you just finished up some worryless tasks? Odds are those words sound vaguely familiar — the sort of thing you think you’ve heard before but aren’t sure you could explicitly define. That’s because they’re gibberish — lachetous and worryless are two of an endless […]"
date: "2020-05-14"
modified: "2020-05-14"
authors:
  - name: "Dan Robitzski"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/danrobitzski"
url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-generates-words-sound-real"
categories:
  - "Artificial Intelligence"
tags:
  - "artificial intelligence"
  - "gpt-2"
  - "language"
  - "the digest"
---

# This Delightful AI Generates Words That Sound Real But Aren’t

![A website called thisworddoesnotexist uses AI to generate fake but believable definitions for made-up words like "lachetous."](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/ai-filling-dictionary-real-sounding-nonsense.jpg>)
*\<em\>Image: Thomas Dimson/Victor Tangermann\</em\>*

## Algorithmic Nonsense

Have you ever heard of a lachetous vine? Maybe you just finished up some worryless tasks?

Those words sound vaguely familiar — perhaps you think you've heard them before but aren't sure you could explicitly define them. That's because they're gibberish — part of an endless stream of words conjured up by an algorithm programmed to make new words that sound as believable as possible.

![](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/new-word-1-lachetous.png>)

## Technobabble

The made-up words are generated by the website [thisworddoesnotexist.com](<https://www.thisworddoesnotexist.com/>), which is a creation of former Instagram engineer Thomas Dimson, *[The Verge ](<https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/14/21258465/thisworddoesnotexist-dictionary-ai-generated-words>)*[reports](<https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/14/21258465/thisworddoesnotexist-dictionary-ai-generated-words>). Each time the site is refreshed, it comes up with a new word — with varying degrees of success.

![](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/new-word-2-worryless.png>)

Thisworddoesnotexist uses the OpenAI-created algorithm GPT-2, which generates plausible text that's been used to algorithmically create everything from [text-based adventure games](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/roleplaying-ai-game-dungeon-master>) to [grad school essays](<https://futurism.com/grad-student-neural-network-write-papers>).

## Crowdsourced

Because GPT-2 wasn't trained on dictionaries — *The Verge­* reports that it instead scraped 8 million websites from popular Reddit links — some of the new definitions are still a little bit off.

![](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/new-word-3-pennyco.png>)

But AI-generated dictionary is still a notable accomplishment, given that understanding the meanings of words has long been one of the [major limitations](<https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence-hype>) of modern-day artificial intelligence.

**READ MORE:** [ThisWordDoesNotExist.com is rewriting the dictionary with the help of AI](<https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/14/21258465/thisworddoesnotexist-dictionary-ai-generated-words>) \[*The Verge*\]

**More on GPT-2:** *[This Grad Student Used a Neural Network to Write His Papers](<https://futurism.com/grad-student-neural-network-write-papers>)*

## Author
Dan Robitzki is a senior reporter for Futurism, where he likes to cover AI, tech ethics, and medicine. He spends his extra time fencing and streaming games from Los Angeles, California.

### Author social links  
[Twitter](<https://x.com/danrobitzski>)