Can AI Write Stand-up Comedy?

All around the world people are finding creative new ways to use Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI can improve computer code that you have written, it can help your child with his or her Maths homework, it can even generate a lovely painting of a cat in a field eating ice-cream and it's free to do so, but can AI really write comedy?

After attending a comedy class recently which involved writing some comedy material and then experiencing the buzz of performing my material on stage, and then continuing the thrill by watching my own video performance several times a day, I became curious about what AI would have written for free. So I decided to ask AI to write a joke.

I pasted the contents of my whole set into a Language Learning Machine and asked it to improve my stand-up comedy material. What AI delivered in less than two seconds was, in my opinion, not an improvement on what I had spent two weeks writing. This article  researches the various views around the use of AI in comedy and in my case it was obvious to the untrained eye that the comedy material had been written by a computer. It lacked the human element because AI is free from feelings or any life experiences to draw from. The formation of jokes was also very matter of fact.

To be fair AI is, as we know, continually learning from humans therefore as the saying goes 'garbage in, garbage out'. We humans also need to learn what questions to ask AI to get the results we want. I came across this video of Jon the Robot who appears to be getting some laughs from the audience while learning about comedic timing. This experiment shows what is possible when you have free time to do the training.

Using AI mode in Google search engine I found that shortening the text to a sentence or paragraph proved slightly more successful for me. Though still not funny, the results had potential.

I then took a different approach and came up with a general idea for a joke theme and asked AI to write a 5 minute stand-up comedy material on this theme and feel free to try this also. I liked what it returned. Several points that I had already noted down for discussion were included plus a few more angles that I had not even considered. The structure of the comedy material was still not something that would deliver jokes on it's own, even when delivered by the most experienced comedian, but it had potential. One thing to note with AI though is that it gathers material from across the web to deliver results, therefore the jokes it returns could actually have been written by another comedian.

I could have tried a few more attempts at asking AI to write comedy material for free but decided to end there. The process was far more time consuming than it would have been to sit down and write myself. I would say AI can help comedians to write jokes because it is useful for generating ideas for writing stand-up comedy material but for writing a performance ready five minute stand-up routine that is both original and funny, for now at least AI should leave that to the humans.

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