PC does un-PC comedy routine

Who says computers don't have a sense of humour? Scientists at the University of Edinburgh have developed one that makes sexist jokes.

The machine has been designed to generate its own witty one-liners following a simple set of rules.

The system is programmed to exploit one of the most successful and popular components of comedy, in which a statement is followed up with a surprising comment. Comedians such as Tommy Cooper and Les Dawson used this style with great affect.

But, like some of its human predecessors, the computerised comedian has developed a rather politically incorrect approach to humour - the jokes it produces can be sexist.

Others veer more into the surreal than the genuinely funny.

The computer software was designed to find unlikely pairings of words and to make a connection between them. It most commonly came up with jokes comparing men or women with another object, such as: "I like my women like I like my gas -natural."

While some jokes could have rivalled a human comedian for generating a wry smile, others did not work as well. One joke that did not work well was: "I like my men like I like my court - superior."

Some comedians have made a successful career out of jokes like these. Chicago-based Darren Carter improvises: "I like my women like I like my ." jokes according to words called out by the audience. Among his favourites is: "I like my women like I like my camera - ready to flash."

David Matthews, a computer scientist who helped develop the computerised comedian at the University of Edinburgh's school of informatics, said when they tested the jokes on volunteers they found they laughed, though not as much as they laughed at man-made humour.

He said for computer generated jokes to improve, the software would need cultural awareness.

"Computers have an advantage over people in that they can process masses of information, so we fed computers a wealth of material from which they extracted creative and unusual word combinations to fit our joke template.

"The holy grail for machine-generated comedy would be to include cultural references, but these are very hard to capture."

Matthews will present the computer at the Association for Computational Linguistics annual meeting in Bulgaria.

Some of the less PC jokes generated by the PC

• I like my men like I like my acorns - buried.
• I like my boys like I like my sectors - bad.
• I like my men like I like my monoxide - odourless.
• I like my men like I like my court - superior.

Some that will not upset the PC brigade

• I like my coffee like I like my war - cold.
• I like my relationships like I like my source - open.
• I like my fish like I like my text - raw.
• I like my business like I like my fish - small.