In the last 12 months, artificial intelligence technologies have seen noteworthy updates, one of the highlights being the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022. Rewind to Halloween 2022, and you'll find that I published an article, "These Creepy Halloween Jokes Were Written by AI," where I introduced GPT-3 and the basics of large language models. That article also included a hands-on guide to training GPT-3 for joke writing, covering concepts like zero-shot, few-shot, and many-shot prompting. The result? Twenty Halloween-themed jokes, tied to digital marketing, written by AI.
This year, I've decided to take a different approach. Gone are the training examples; instead, I'm giving ChatGPT— powered by GPT-4 — more creative freedom within the provided themes and topics. You'll want to keep reading if you're keen to see how this year's jokes measure up and whether GPT-4 can deliver the laughs. To top it off, all images in this post are generated by DALL-E 3, the latest in AI image creation.
Examples of AI-Generated Jokes
1. Why did the ghost optimise his website for Halloween?
He wanted to rank first for "boo" on Google!
2. Why did the vampire have such a high open rate on his Halloween newsletter?
Because every subject line was a "dead giveaway"!
3. Why did the witch launch an e-commerce store on Halloween?
She wanted to have spellbinding conversion rates!
4. Why did the mummy love using HubSpot CRM during Halloween?
Because it helped him keep all his leads wrapped up in one place!
5. Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Boo.
Boo who?
Don't cry, your SEO rankings will rise again!
6. Why did the ghost cross the road?
He heard the site on the other side had killer content
7. Did you hear the one about the content marketer who went to a haunted house?
He came out with ghost-written articles!
8. I tried A/B testing my Halloween costume this year.
Results were inconclusive, but I scared half my audience away.
9. Did you hear the one about the marketer who checked his website's traffic on Halloween?
It was dead... quiet!
10. What's an email marketer's favourite Halloween monster?
The Mailer Daemon!
11. Why did the email marketer get a broomstick?
For a clean sweep of inactive subscribers!
12. I tried to set up a Bing Ads campaign for Halloween...
but the only thing that haunted me was the low search volume!
13. The ghost of a dropshipper walks into a bar.
The bartender says, "We don't serve spirits here."
The dropshipper replies, "That's fine, I'll just order it for delivery."
14. If e-commerce websites gave out Halloween treats...
expect a lot of cookies.
Prompt engineering required for joke writing
So, there we have it: 14 Halloween and digital marketing-themed jokes, penned by ChatGPT and GPT-4, and vividly brought to life by DALL-E 3. Crafting these jokes wasn't a straightforward task; they were the best 14 out of around 60 or 70 generated. To get a varied joke format, I had to actively steer ChatGPT, otherwise, it would default to the "why did the..." template. For instance, I discarded jokes like, "Why did the skeleton switch to X after Elon's takeover?" because it felt too 'bare bones' compared to Twitter. Others, such as knock-knock jokes involving SEO or pixel-related humour, also didn't make the cut.
I even tweaked a couple of jokes to make them more readable—the ghost of a dropshipper joke and the HubSpot CRM punchline, to be precise.
So, what's the takeaway? While GPT-4 shows promise in understanding puns, it's not a comedy genius. However, it does excel in rapidly generating a range of ideas, allowing you to sift through and pick the gems. This exercise reaffirms the value of an AI assistant for brainstorming, letting you add your own human touch to the final output.
Wishing you a fantastic Halloween, and stay tuned for more AI-generated humour in 2024.
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