🎭 Turing Test — Can You Spot the AI?
A social deduction game on Reddit where AI-generated responses hide among real human answers. Vote, guess, and earn points — but beware, the AI is getting smarter every day.
Built as a Devvit Web App for Reddit, Turing Test challenges players to distinguish between human-written and AI-generated responses to daily discussion prompts. It's a modern take on the classic Turing Test — but this time, the entire Reddit community is the judge.
📖 Table of Contents
- Motivation
- What is Turing Test?
- How It Works
- How to Play
- Scoring System
- Features
- AI Integration
- Tech Stack
- Architecture
💡 Motivation
The rise of large language models like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude has blurred the line between human and machine-generated text. Every day, millions of people interact with AI-written content without even knowing it — in emails, social media posts, news articles, and online discussions.
This raises a fascinating question: Can you actually tell the difference?
We wanted to turn this question into a fun, interactive, and competitive experience on Reddit — a platform built on authentic human conversation. The idea was simple:
- What if AI secretly joined a Reddit discussion?
- Could the community figure out which responses are real and which are fake?
- What if the AI got progressively harder to detect as the week goes on?
Turing Test was born from this concept. It's not just a game — it's a social experiment that tests how well humans can identify AI in the wild, while also highlighting how convincingly AI can mimic human communication styles.
We also wanted to explore a new frontier in Reddit app development: native AI integration. While most Reddit apps focus on moderation, utilities, or static content, we saw an opportunity to build something that uses AI as a core gameplay mechanic — not as a tool, but as a player.
🎮 What is Turing Test?
Turing Test (codenamed Shapeshifter) is a daily social deduction game that runs as an interactive post on any Reddit subreddit. Each day, the game:
- Generates a creative discussion prompt
- Collects genuine responses from real Reddit users
- Secretly injects AI-generated "imposter" responses into the mix
- Challenges the community to vote on which responses are human and which are AI
- Reveals the truth and awards points based on accuracy
Think of it as Among Us, but with words — and the imposter is an AI.
⚙️ How It Works
The game runs in three phases per post:
Phase 1: ✍️ Writing Phase (4 hours)
- A fresh discussion prompt is displayed (e.g., "What's a hill you'll die on that most people disagree with?")
- Real players submit their honest, authentic responses
- Up to 10 total response slots are available
- Players write naturally — the goal is to sound like themselves
Phase 2: 🗳️ Voting Phase (20 hours)
- The writing phase ends and the AI kicks in
- 2–5 AI-generated responses are injected alongside the human ones
- All 10 responses are shuffled and anonymized — no one knows who wrote what
- Every player reads through all responses and votes: Human or AI?
- Players cannot vote on their own response
Phase 3: 📊 Results Phase
- The truth is revealed! Each response is unmasked as human or AI
- Players see how they scored
- Writer bonuses are calculated
- The community leaderboard updates
🕹️ How to Play
- Find a Turing Test post in a participating subreddit
- Click the post to open the interactive game interface
- During Writing Phase:
- Read the daily prompt
- Write your most authentic, human-sounding response
- Submit before the timer runs out
- During Voting Phase:
- Read all 10 responses carefully
- For each response, vote whether you think it's Human or AI
- Look for subtle clues: tone, specificity, personal anecdotes, unusual phrasing
- During Results Phase:
- See the reveal — were you right?
- Check your score and see if you earned any bonuses
- Climb the leaderboard!
🧠 Tips for Spotting AI
- AI tends to be too polished and balanced
- Look for generic examples vs. specific personal stories
- AI often hedges with phrases like "it depends" or "that said"
- Real humans make typos, use slang, and go off on tangents
- Watch for responses that feel like they're trying too hard to be relatable
🏆 Scoring System
| Action | Points |
|---|---|
| ✅ Correctly identifying a response (human or AI) | +10 |
| ❌ Wrong guess | -5 |
| 🥸 Master Disguise Bonus — More than 50% of voters thought you were AI | +25 |
| 💎 Authenticity Bonus — More than 80% correctly identified you as human | +15 |
Bonus Breakdown
- Master Disguise (+25): Your writing was so unusual or creative that the majority of players suspected you were an AI. This is the ultimate compliment — you broke people's expectations of what a human sounds like.
- Authenticity (+15): Your writing was so genuinely you that almost everyone correctly identified you as human. You're the real deal.
✨ Features
🎯 Daily Fresh Content
Every game post features a unique discussion prompt — from philosophical debates to hot takes to creative scenarios. No two games are the same.
📈 Progressive Difficulty
The AI difficulty scales throughout the week:
- Monday (Level 1): 🟢 Easy — AI responses are formal and clearly robotic
- Tuesday (Level 2): 🟡 Medium — AI starts using casual language
- Wednesday (Level 3): 🟠 Hard — AI adopts Reddit-style writing with slang
- Thursday (Level 4): 🔴 Expert — AI mimics specific personality types
- Friday (Level 5): 💀 Impossible — AI is virtually indistinguishable from a real Redditor
🏅 Persistent Leaderboard
Scores accumulate across games. The leaderboard tracks total points and games played, creating a competitive metagame within the subreddit.
⏱️ Real-Time Countdown
Live countdown timers show exactly how much time remains in each phase. The game auto-advances between phases.
📱 Responsive Design
The game interface is fully responsive and works on desktop, mobile web, and Reddit mobile apps. Dark theme matches Reddit's native look and feel.
🔄 Auto-Polling
The game state refreshes every 30 seconds, so players see phase transitions and new submissions in near real-time.
🧪 Dev Tools
A built-in "Skip to next phase" button allows moderators and developers to quickly test the full game flow without waiting for timers.
🤖 AI Integration
This is what makes Turing Test unique. We've deeply integrated Google's Gemini 2.0 Flash AI model directly into the game as a core mechanic — not as a helper tool, but as an active participant.
How AI is Used
Prompt Generation: Each game's discussion prompt is generated by Gemini, ensuring fresh, engaging, and creative topics every time. We have 14 handcrafted fallback prompts as backup.
Imposter Responses: During the transition from writing to voting phase, Gemini generates 2–5 AI responses that attempt to blend in with the human responses. The AI reads the prompt and the human responses to craft its imposters contextually.
Difficulty-Scaled Personas: The AI doesn't just generate text — it adopts specific personas based on the day's difficulty level:
- Level 1: Writes formally with proper grammar (easy to spot)
- Level 2: Adds casual flair and contractions
- Level 3: Uses Reddit slang, abbreviations, and informal structure
- Level 4: Mimics specific personality types with quirks and tangents
- Level 5: Writes with deliberate imperfections — typos, incomplete thoughts, emotional outbursts — virtually indistinguishable from a real Redditor
Robust Fallback System: If the AI API is unavailable, the game gracefully falls back to pre-written responses and prompts, ensuring the game never breaks.
Why This Matters
AI integration in Reddit apps is still relatively new territory. Most apps use AI for moderation or content analysis behind the scenes. Turing Test puts AI front and center as a gameplay mechanic, creating an experience that:
- Is inherently engaging because it taps into a universal curiosity
- Gets more interesting as AI models improve over time
- Creates genuine social interaction and discussion
- Serves as an informal benchmark for AI language capabilities
🛠️ Tech Stack
| Layer | Technology |
|---|---|
| Platform | Reddit Devvit Web (v0.12.12) |
| Frontend | React 19, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS 4 |
| Backend | Hono (server framework), tRPC v11 (type-safe API) |
| AI | Google Gemini 2.0 Flash API |
| Database | Devvit Redis (key-value + sorted sets) |
| Build | Vite, Vitest |
| Language | TypeScript (end-to-end type safety) |
🏗️ Architecture
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Reddit Client │
│ ┌───────────┐ ┌──────────────────────┐ │
│ │ Splash UI │───▶│ Game UI (React) │ │
│ │ (inline) │ │ Writing │ Voting │ │ │
│ └───────────┘ │ Results │ Board │ │ │
│ └──────────┬───────────┘ │
│ │ tRPC │
├──────────────────────────────┼──────────────┤
│ Devvit Server │ │
│ ┌───────────────────────────▼───────────┐ │
│ │ Hono API Router │ │
│ │ ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────────────┐ │ │
│ │ │ Menu │ │ Game Engine │ │ │
│ │ │ Actions │ │ (create, vote, │ │ │
│ │ └─────────┘ │ score, advance) │ │ │
│ │ └────────┬──────────┘ │ │
│ └────────────────────────┼──────────────┘ │
│ ┌────────────┼────────────┐ │
│ │ │ │ │
│ ┌────▼────┐ ┌───▼────┐ ┌────▼─┐ │
│ │ Redis │ │ Gemini │ │Reddit│ │
│ │ Store │ │ API │ │ API │ │
│ └─────────┘ └────────┘ └──────┘ │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Data Flow
- Moderator creates a game post via the subreddit menu
- Game engine initializes: generates prompt via Gemini, stores config in Redis
- Players open the post → splash screen → expanded game view
- Writing phase: player submissions stored in Redis
- Voting transition: Gemini generates AI imposters, all responses shuffled
- Voting phase: votes stored per-player in Redis
- Results: scores calculated, leaderboard updated in Redis sorted sets
Built with ❤️ for the Reddit Developer community. Inspired by the original Turing Test — because the best way to understand AI is to play against it.
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