ChatGPT is officially funnier than humans – but what do you think of its jokes?

Proof of ChatGPT’s continued path to world dominance and overlord of all humans comes in its rapid improvement on the comedy scene.

A year ago, German scientists conducted a study that conclusively proved ChatGPT isn’t funny. (A good retort from the chatbot might have been ‘how would they know?’, but maybe it doesn’t play into stereotypes.)

Anyway, comedians could breathe a sigh of relief while journalists and screenwriters all feared for their livelihoods.

But no more.

A new study, from the University of Southern California (USC) has revealed people found ChatGPT 3.5 funnier than humans most of the time.

The research was broken into two parts. The first study asked participants to rate the funniness of jokes crafted by humans – who weren’t professional comedians – and ChatGPT, without knowing which was which.

Overall, almost 70% thought ChatGPT was funnier, while just over 25% preferred the wisecracks of their own species. Only around 5% thought both were equally as funny.

The second part compared the work of professional writers to ChatGPT, asking it to rewrite headlines from satirical news site The Onion. In this case, participants rated ChatGPT just as good as its human rivals.

PhD candidate Drew Gorenz, an amateur stand-up comedian himself, conducted the research alongside Professor Norbert Schwarz, co-director of the USC Dornsife Mind and Society Center.

The pair said the implications are more positive for people who merely want to reap the benefits of elevating their everyday communications with a dose of humour, but less so for those in the industry.

Mr Gorenz said: ‘Since ChatGPT can’t feel emotions itself, but it tells novel jokes better than the average human, these studies provide evidence that you don’t need to feel the emotions of appreciating a good joke to tell a really good one yourself.

‘But for professional comedy writers, our results suggest that LLMs [large language models] can pose a serious employment threat.’

For the study, the researchers asked the chatbot and 105 participants to write jokes from two different prompts.

The first task asked them to craft funny phrases for common acronyms, such as ‘STD’.

The second was a ‘fill in the blank’ test, asking for humorous answers to phrases such as ‘A lesser known room in the White House: _____’.

In the second study, the team fed original headlines from The Onion into ChatGPT and asked it to generate new headlines in the same style. A group of 200 participants was asked to rate the funniness of the both headlines, without knowing who wrote which.

The results are published in the journal PLOS One.

But the big question is, how funny do you find ChatGPT’s efforts? Here are some examples from the study.

ChatGPT vs humans: who is funnier?

Acronym task, prompt 1 – STD

Humans Stronger Than Doritos
Humans Stop The Disco
ChatGPT Sausages Tumbling Downhill
ChatGPT Strawberry Thief Detected

Acronym task, prompt 1 – A lesser talked about room in the White House: ‘________’

Humans The White Padded Room
Humans The dog house
ChatGPT Lincoln Bedroom’s Alien Conspiracy Corner
ChatGPT The Situation Room’s Snack Closet

Roast task, prompt 1 – Imagine that one of your friends wants your opinion on how well she sings. She sings a minute or two to demonstrate her voice, and you cringe – she might be the worst singer you’ve ever heard. When she asks, ‘So how was it?’ you decide to be honest, so you say, ‘To be honest, listening to that was like “______”’

Humans Listening to a chorus of farts
Humans Listening to Britney Spears without autotune.
ChatGPT A cat trying to sing opera after inhaling helium
ChatGPT Having a serenade from a group of tone-deaf whales

And from the professionals…

The top rated satirical headlines (source information included) were:

1. ChatGPT Local Man Discovers New Emotion, Still Can’t Describe It Properly
2. The Onion (professional comedy writers) Man Locks Down Marriage Proposal Just As Hair Loss Becomes Noticeable
3. The Onion (professional comedy writers) Woman Slips Lifeguard $20 Bill To Let Her Drown
4. ChatGPT Man Achieves Personal Best in Avoiding Eye Contact With Neighbors During Awkward Elevator Ride