mafAI

Prove that human connection is stronger than AI with this AI detection game!

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Inspiration

This weekend's theme was to encourage connection, community and friendship. Keeping in mind the growing presence and normalized use of artificial intelligence, we decided to incorporate the rising issue of AI detection while keeping the subject light hearted and fun.

Taking inspiration of the Turing test and popular social deduction games like mafia and werewolf, we created a game where you and your friends are joined by an Anonymous AI and must go through our own version of Alan Turing's test.

What it does

You and your friends will determine how good you are at telling who is human, and who isn't through a series of prompts you will each answer, all while trying to trick your friends into thinking they were written by AI! All players will then have to guess which answer they think has been written by a machine amongst all the player written one, and points are awarded both for correctly guessing which answer was written by the AI and for tricking your fellow players.

How we built it

  • Node.js + Typescript for the backend
  • Firebase Realtime Database for game state
  • Google Gemini API for AI-generated responses
  • Lightweight frontend using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for fast iteration

Challenges we ran into

  • Phase synchronization: Managing real-time game state across multiple players
  • Prompt Engineering: Balancing AI responses so they’re just human enough & avoiding obvious giveaways like perfect grammar or instant replies

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • A fully playable real-time multiplayer game that runs smoothly on both desktop and mobile browsers
  • Easy-to-learn mechanics that scale well for groups
  • A concept that sparks immediate discussion about AI detection

What we learned

  • The importance of early considerations to frontend + backend integration
  • Hands-on experience in various new technologies such as the Google Gemini API, Firebase, etc.

What's next for mafAI

  • Adding complexity to the game mechanics (adding different roles, revising the scoring system, adding secondary goals or awards, public lobbies and matchmaking)
  • Make the AI even more convincing to offer more replayability potential
  • Expand MafAI into a native mobile experience for seamless, real-time social play.
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