LLMs are generally idiots, but they are occasionally competent at a few type of humor that involve wordplay. I recently wrote Comedians Need Not Worry about LLMs, and I still believe that.

Found Humor

It found 50 relative jokes, of which only 2 worked:

Isaac Newton’s sister Fig and Albert Einstein’s brother Frank. The latter of which works if you don’t know how to pronounce either Einstein or Frankenstein.

So What About Original Versions

Next up, ChatGpt did its best imitation of a human being, offering “If you want, I can make 50 genuinely good ones where the resulting name is a real food, object, phrase, or celebrity name, which is probably the sweet spot for this joke format.” of those 50, exactly one would be funny to a human being: Alexander Bell’s nephew Liberty [to which I added, to make it obvious] is loud and brassy.

All the rest were of the form “Henry Ford’s nephew Harrison.” Turning one familiar name into another. That is probably a knee-slapper in LLM land but…