Two cartoons from The New Yorker with original captions and captions written with the help of AI. Images: University of Sydney, cartoon by Matthew Diffie and Mick Stevens, The New Yorker, Condé Nast.
Researchers at the University of Sydney used an AI-assisted application to help people write captions for cartoons featured in the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest.
Twenty participants, who had little experience writing comic captions, wrote 400 comic captions. 200 captions were written with the help of his AI tools and the rest without any assistance.
A second group of 67 people then rated how funny the captions of these cartoons were. Researchers found that jokes written using the tool were much funnier than those written without the tool. By comparison, the AI-assisted caption was rated almost 30% closer to the winning caption in the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest.
Participants said the tool helped them start piecing together humorous stories, understand nuances and funny elements, and come up with new ideas.
Of the 200 jokes written with the help of AI, nearly half, 95, were rated funnier by The New Yorker than the original cartoon captions.
“AI tools can help people become significantly more interesting, but more importantly, it has the potential to cure writer's block,” said Dr. Anusha Wisana of the Department of Computer Science and Digital Science Initiative. I did.
AI helps non-native speakers become interesting with new languages
Dr. Withana and his team have devised a tool to help non-native speakers understand humor in a new language. The results showed that non-native speakers found the tool more helpful, and he was 43% closer to the winning caption.
Dr Withana, who was born in Sri Lanka and has lived in Japan, Singapore, Germany and now Australia, said understanding local humor can often be a “minefield” for newcomers.
“In my new country, I often felt like I was 'out of tune'. For example, I once made a sarcastic comment that was not well received in Germany. Here in Australia, I was laughed at. “It would have been,” he said. . ”
Hasindu Kariyawasam led the research project as an undergraduate research intern.
“Humor is a very important way of relating to others. It is also important for mental well-being, creativity, and managing stress, depression, and anxiety. As a non-native speaker myself, , we found this system helpful,” he said. Writing jokes has become easier and the experience more enjoyable. ”
How can AI help us understand humor?
The original goal of this research was to use technology to unleash creativity and put words on a page. Her master's student and amateur cartoonist Alistair Palmer came up with the idea to get more people involved in comics.
The tool works through an algorithm that assesses discomfort. It analyzes the words contained in manga descriptions and generates words that seem strange as hints for manga artists.
For example, one cartoon depicts a person wearing a bunny suit to the office. The tool suggested the words “rabbit” and “soup” (derived from a discrepancy between the words “suit”). One participant in the pilot study came up with the caption, “I meant rabbit soup, not suits.” The winning caption in the New Yorker contest was, “Henderson wasn't the only one. The company fired the entire bunny department.”
