Rescued guinea pigs named using artificial intelligence

June 21 (UPI) -- An animal rescue refuge in Pennsylvania sought help from an artificial neural network researcher to name a group of guinea pigs.

Morris Animal Refuge in Philadelphia reached out to Janelle Shane to help name nine newly adoptable guinea pigs that arrived at the station, using artificial intelligence.

"Naming pets can be hard. So when we suddenly got in 9 adoptable guinea pigs, we of course turned to researcher Janelle Shane for help," the refuge said. "She's been in the news for training artificial neural networks to come up with paint colors, recipe names, etc., with fascinating results."

Shane previously used the neural network to generate a series of names for Portland Guinea Pig Rescue by feeding the system hundreds of guinea pig names from the internet and other sources.

"I gave the neural network the list of 600+ guinea pig names that the Portland Guinea Pig Rescue assembled for me, and let it train itself to produce more names like the ones on its list," Shane told Gizmodo. "It gradually formed its own internal rules about which letters and letter combinations are the most quintessentially guinea pig."

After receiving the request from Morris Animal Refuge, Shane used the system to generate about a dozen guinea pig names.

The chosen names included Spooty, Snofer, Fizzby, Sprinket, Dandy, Mumpkans, Astrono, Hally Flope and the refuge's favorite -- Biinshecklesseon.