In honour of Father’s Day we present the Battle of the Punchlines. In one corner, dad jokes submitted by Globe readers and staff. In the other, dad jokes from a selection of AI chatbots.
We used ChatGPT4o, Google Gemini, Meta AI and Grok from X to come up with some punny gags. When asked, each chatbot offered the same basic understanding of a dad joke. For example, Meta AI said “A ‘dad joke’ is a type of joke or pun that is often cheesy, corny and predictable, yet endearing and amusing.”
But the chatbots lost points for lack of originality, suggesting they were trained on similar source data or that dad jokes are inherently unoriginal. Here’s a sample of our exchange with ChatGPT which had it coming up with jokes we’d already heard.
Screenshot of an exchange with ChatGPT4o prompting it to generate original dad jokes.OpenAI
In 2023, The Globe reported on concerns about AI subjugating humanity and interviewed one of the grandfathers of the technology, Geoffrey Hinton. Hinton had found that ChatGPT was able to grasp the meaning of a joke with an intentional typo. As the story noted, to Hinton, this was “one sign that language models have leapfrogged over past iterations and are more capable than many people assume.”
Take the quiz below to see if you agree – and if you can differentiate between the homegrown (or should that be homegroan) jokes and what the AIs generated.
a. Why is the mushroom always invited to parties? Because he's a fun guy! These jokes have mushroom to improve.
(a: submitted by Kate W., b: Gemini, c: ChatGPT)
b. When does a joke become a dad? When it becomes apparent. If you parrot this joke you're in for pun-ishment.
(a: Grok, b: submitted by Lisa F., c: Gemini)
b. What do you call a deer with no eye? No eye-deer. What do you call a deer with no eye and no leg? Still no-eye deer.
(a: ChatGPT, b: submitted by Mike L. c: Meta AI)
c. Why do fish swim in saltwater? Because pepper makes them sneeze. Cod these jokes get any punnier?
(a: Meta AI, b: ChatGPT, c: submitted by Bob E.)
b. What do you call a pirate who got away with the booty? Long-gone silver. We graded this joke a high C.
(a: Grok, b: submitted by Justin, c: ChatGPT
c. A joke doesn’t become a dad joke until it’s full groan. I tell dad jokes, but I don’t have any kids. I’m a faux pa.
(a: Meta AI, b: Gemini, c: submitted by Nancy L.)
a. I had to take the dog to the vet after he swallowed a bunch of Scrabble tiles. No word yet. Are dogs good at science? Well, labs are.
(a: submitted by Baljeet B., b: Grok, c: Gemini)
a. Why aren’t koalas real bears? Because they don’t meet the koalafications. If only it was a giraffe, people really look up to them.
(a: submitted by David M.,b: ChatGPT, c: Meta AI)
How well did you do?
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