Microsoft researchers have developed an artificial intelligence system which can work out whether something is funny or not.
They fed an archive of cartoons and caption-contest entries from the New Yorker magazine into artificial intelligence software.
It was then programmed to rank them in order to find the funniest caption suggestions.
Because computer vision software struggles to interpret drawings, each cartoon had to be described in text to the machine.
The popular caption contest in the New Yorker means that 5,000 caption contest entries are combed through by an assistant each week, and it's hoped the artificial intelligence system could lighten the load.
For example, the system was tested out using a cartoon showing a car salesman selling a hybrid animal-vehicle with hairy legs instead of wheels.
The computer picked "Just listen to that baby purr" as one of the top captions, while: "It runs on a 100% fuel efficient Paleo diet," was ranked bottom.
The machine's selections do not always match the New Yorker editors' choices, but all of the editors' favourites appeared in the computer's top 55.8% of choices.
That suggests that by using the computer system to weed out weaker entries, it could effectively cut the workload of staff in half without losing the best entries.
The researchers say they hope to one day train computers to come up with their own jokes based on specific situations.
They fed an archive of cartoons and caption-contest entries from the New Yorker magazine into artificial intelligence software.
It was then programmed to rank them in order to find the funniest caption suggestions.
Because computer vision software struggles to interpret drawings, each cartoon had to be described in text to the machine.
The popular caption contest in the New Yorker means that 5,000 caption contest entries are combed through by an assistant each week, and it's hoped the artificial intelligence system could lighten the load.
For example, the system was tested out using a cartoon showing a car salesman selling a hybrid animal-vehicle with hairy legs instead of wheels.
The computer picked "Just listen to that baby purr" as one of the top captions, while: "It runs on a 100% fuel efficient Paleo diet," was ranked bottom.
The machine's selections do not always match the New Yorker editors' choices, but all of the editors' favourites appeared in the computer's top 55.8% of choices.
That suggests that by using the computer system to weed out weaker entries, it could effectively cut the workload of staff in half without losing the best entries.
The researchers say they hope to one day train computers to come up with their own jokes based on specific situations.
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