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AI-generated memes are officially funnier than yours, according to researchers who probably didn’t expect this outcome. A recent study found that memes created entirely by artificial intelligence scored higher in humor, creativity, and shareability than those made by humans — and even beat memes created when humans and AI collaborated.
The research wasn’t actually trying to crown the ultimate meme champion. Instead, it aimed to explore how large language models (LLMs) might help humans with creative tasks like joke-writing. The findings were published on the arXiv preprint server and presented at the 30th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces last month.
“While previous research has explored the abilities of Large Language Models 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,” the study’s authors explained.
Researchers divided 150 participants into three groups of 50. The first group created memes without AI assistance, the second collaborated with a state-of-the-art LLM, and the third group wasn’t human at all — it was just the LLM generating memes autonomously.
AI assistance did help human participants generate more ideas with less effort.
However, something unexpected happened. The fully AI-generated memes outperformed both human-only and human-AI collaborative efforts across all quality metrics on average. This surprising result prompted Ethan Mollick, professor and co-director of the generative AI lab at Wharton University, to joke on BlueSky: “I regret to announce that the meme Turing Test has been passed.”
Speaking of Turing tests — just last week, another study claimed two different AI models had passed this benchmark, which tests whether machines can produce responses indistinguishable from human ones.
But don’t despair about your meme-making abilities just yet. When researchers examined only the top-performing memes from each category, humans still maintained an edge in humor, while human-AI collaborations excelled in creativity and shareability.
The study highlights AI’s growing capability to understand and recreate culturally specific forms of expression — even something as nuanced as internet humor. It also raises interesting questions about whether AI assistance might actually constraint human creativity in certain contexts rather than enhance it.
For those counting, that’s one more creative domain where AI is catching up to — or potentially surpassing — human capabilities. At least we’re still better at enjoying the memes, right?
