Summary: A new study shows that AI can create internet memes rated as funny and shareable as those made by humans, but the best jokes still come from people. Researchers compared memes made by humans, AI, and human-AI teams, using classic templates like Doge and Futurama Fry.
While AI-generated memes scored highest on average, the top-ranked memes came from humans, with human-AI collaborations excelling in creativity. The findings suggest AI can assist with content generation, but human insight is still crucial for humor that resonates.
Key Facts:
- AI Memes Are Funny—On Average: Fully AI-generated memes outperformed others in average ratings.
- Humans Still Top: The funniest individual memes were made by humans, not machines.
- Best of Both Worlds: Human-AI collaborations were most creative and widely shareable.
Source: KTH
Can AI do humor? A new study suggests artificial intelligence can create internet memes as funny as those made by humans. But when it comes to gags that truly connect with viewers, people still have the edge.
Researchers from KTH Royal Institute of Technology, LMU Munich, and TU Darmstadt recently conducted the first large-scale study exploring how humans and AI collaborate to create internet memes.
The team compared three groups: humans working alone, humans co-creating with a cutting-edge language model (LLM), and the LLM generating memes entirely on its own.
Participants created memes using classic templates like Doge, Futurama Fry, and Boromir’s iconic “One does not simply…” line. A second group of nearly 100 people then rated the memes for creativity, humor, and shareability.
The researchers found that on average, memes made entirely by AI scored higher than those made by humans or human-AI teams. But the top-performing memes told a different story: humans were funniest, while human-AI collaborations stood out in creativity and shareability.
Published on the ACM Digital Library, the paper was presented at the 2025 International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces in Cagliari, Italy.
“AI is great at generating lots of ideas quickly,” says the study’s co-author, Zhikun Wu, a master’s candidate at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. “But quantity doesn’t always mean quality.”
Able to draw from vast datasets, AI models can produce content that appeals to a wide audience, the authors wrote. But many of the top-rated memes were created with human involvement, suggesting that AI models primarily produce “solid but average quality.”
“The best results came when humans curated and refined what the AI produced,” Wu says.
Participants who worked with the AI assistant generated more ideas and reported less effort—but many didn’t fully engage with the system. Fewer than half interacted with the AI more than once, and only a handful used it iteratively. This limited use may have held back the potential of true co-creativity.
The study highlighted a key challenge in human-AI collaboration: while AI can produce content that appeals to a broad audience, human creativity is still essential for content that resonates deeply—especially in humor, Wu says.
“Humor isn’t just about punchlines,” Wu says. “It’s about surprise, cultural context, and emotional nuance—things AI doesn’t fully grasp.”
The researchers argue that future AI tools should better support iterative, dialog-based creativity, helping users stay connected to their work while amplifying their ideas. In other words, systems shouldn’t just generate content, but help people shape it into something meaningful.
“While AI can increase productivity and produce content that appeals to a wide audience, human creativity is still key for creating content that connects more deeply in certain areas,” the authors wrote.
About this artificial intelligence research news
Author: David Callahan
Source: KTH
Contact: David Callahan – KTH
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Closed access.
“One Does Not Simply Meme Alone: Evaluating Co-Creativity Between LLMs and Humans in the Generation of Humor” by Zhikun Wu et al. arXiv
Abstract
One Does Not Simply Meme Alone: Evaluating Co-Creativity Between LLMs and Humans in the Generation of Humor
Collaboration has been shown to enhance creativity, leading to more innovative and effective outcomes.
While previous research has explored the abilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) to serve as co-creative partners in tasks like writing poetry or creating narratives, the collaborative potential of LLMs in humor-rich and culturally nuanced domains remains an open question.
To address this gap, we conducted a user study to explore the potential of LLMs in co-creating memes – a humor-driven and culturally specific form of creative expression.
We conducted a user study with three groups of 50 participants each: a human-only group creating memes without AI assistance, a human-AI collaboration group interacting with a state-of-the-art LLM model, and an AI-only group where the LLM autonomously generated memes.
We assessed the quality of the generated memes through crowdsourcing, with each meme rated on creativity, humor, and shareability. Our results showed that LLM assistance increased the number of ideas generated and reduced the effort participants felt.
However, it did not improve the quality of the memes when humans collaborated with LLM. Interestingly, memes created entirely by AI performed better than both human-only and human-AI collaborative memes in all areas on average.
However, when looking at the top-performing memes, human-created ones were better in humor, while human-AI collaborations stood out in creativity and shareability.
These findings highlight the complexities of human-AI collaboration in creative tasks.
While AI can boost productivity and create content that appeals to a broad audience, human creativity remains crucial for content that connects on a deeper level.
