By Tory Shepherd
Publication Date: 2025-12-07 14:00:00
Robots can make people laugh — especially when they fall over — but a new research project examines whether robots that use AI could ever actually be funny.
Ask ChatGPT for a funny joke and you’ll be served something that belongs in a Christmas cracker: “Why don’t skeletons fight each other? Because they don’t have the guts.”
Dr. The University of Melbourne’s Robert Walton, research assistant to the dean in the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, is taking a different approach to studying whether robots can do comedy.
Thanks to an Australian Research Council grant of around $500,000, he will train a swarm of robots in stand-up. And at least in the beginning, they won’t use words.
“Robots are good at making people laugh…they’re humorous because they break and bump into things, and that’s why we laugh at them,” Walton says.
“However, when they intentionally try to do something funny, it’s not so funny anymore. We don’t laugh at them because we really…
