Are you the type of person who wishes he or she was funnier? Or maybe you simply want an always-present, context-aware meme generator? In both of those cases, Microsoft Research is here to help you.
Microsoft Research has created just such a system, one that works in the background and analyzes your chats with other people, and continuously suggests memes that you can insert into your conversation. The Computer-Aided Humor program (CAH), named CAHOOTS, was detailed in a research paper titled “OMG UR Funny!”.
Researchers found that conversation participants actually found the program to be useful, as it suggested funny, positive or sarcastic memes based on what was written. CAHOOTS, which was tested using Amazon’s for-hire Mechanical Turk users, was also compared to regular chat and having a bot automatically insert funny images into conversations. Microsoft’s program came out on top of all those options with users finding CAHOOTS conversations to be more fun, and feeling more involved and closer to the other participant.
Microsoft puts this kind of program into the category of “creativity support tools”. As opposed to productivity support tools, which users are much more familiar with; creativity tools like this are pushing the boundaries of AI and machine learning.
While there’s no mention of a release date or even plans to bring CAHOOTS to market, we wouldn’t be at all surprised if research such as this leads to improvements to Cortana and other Microsoft products.
Source: Microsoft Research Via: Engadget
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