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The Guardian - AU

Technology

Tory Shepherd

A robot walks into a bar: can a Melbourne researcher get AI to do comedy?

Robert Walton Melbourne Robots

Stage set up for standup comedy. A Melbourne researcher is setting out to see if AI can be trained to be genuinely funny. — An ensemble of about 10 robots – which will not be androids but ground vehicles between 40cm and 2 metres tall – will work with humans to learn how to be funny. Photograph: Getty Images

Robots can make humans laugh – mostly when they fall over – but a new research project is looking at whether robots using AI could ever be genuinely funny.

If you ask ChatGPT for a funny joke, it will serve you up something that belongs in a Christmas cracker: “Why don’t skeletons fight each other? Because they don’t have the guts.”

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