How I Built FunnyGPT, an AI Model That Writes Standup Comedy

Surprisingly, it’s actually good

Illustration by the author via 4o

What do you get if you cross an AI Large Language Model with a comedian?

A comic who can do 7,000 impressions, but still has no idea what a banana tastes like.

“A comedian who only does crowd work if you’ve accepted cookies” works too.

Those are pretty solid one liners. I can’t take credit, though, because I didn’t come up with them. They’re the product of a powerful AI system that I built and trained specifically to write standup comedy.

I’m calling it FunnyGPT. It’s built using today’s bleeding-edge AI tools, integrates over 100 years of comedy best practices, and can conjure up a “tight five” on any topic in about 15 seconds.

The best part of all? It’s actually funny.

Learning from the Greats

I should preface this by saying that — although I love to inject a good deal of humor into my own writing — I’ve never done standup comedy.

When I set out to create an AI standup comedy writer, I knew I would be a terrible person to train it. So instead, I took a different approach.