The New Yorker Caption Contest
The New Yorker Caption Contest is a long-running tradition. Each week, a cartoon is presented and readers submit their funniest captions. It's a battle of wits, and the winner gets their caption published in the magazine.
Quiz: Which caption do you think is the funniest?
Caption Analysis
Every week, thousands of people submit captions. Some aim for absurdity. Others for dry wit. Only a few get people to laugh out loud. But what do the winners have in common—and can we use math to measure it?
To find out, we analyzed a dataset of 2.3 million captions, created by researchers at NextML. Each human-written caption was rated by real readers on a scale from 1 (unfunny) to 3 (funny). We then asked two AI models to generate their own captions for the same cartoon. Could machines understand humor?
This story explores the patterns, personalities, and punchlines that emerged—from both humans and machines.
Part 1: The Humans – What makes a caption funny?
Part 2: AI captions - Can AI models make us laugh?
Part 3: The Gallery – All the cartoons, their best captions by humans and AI models