The comic element in us builds unbelievable and remarkable power and prowess, shaping our mental well-being as humans. It’s a powerful stress reliever, mood lifter, and social contractor.

Recently, artificial intelligence (AI) has gained attention for its role in humour and mental well-being.

“For billions of people, mental health care is inaccessible and unaffordable. With the internet at our fingertips, Generative AI possesses the capability to match us with the right therapy”, says Sourav Banerjee, Founder and CTO, of United We Care.

“Gen AI can craft fresh, ready-to-brew content, spanning text, images, or music. It also self-learns through vast datasets. There are various ways generative AI can create humour. It can be trained on joke datasets or use “reinforcement learning” to make people laugh. Generative AI has the potential to transform humor, tailored to individual needs.”

According to Banerjee some of the benefits of AI-generated humor include stress and anxiety reduction, improved mood and outlook reflections, enhanced social connectivity and coping with unseen challenges.

“Laughter triggers the release of endorphins, mood-boosting chemicals. AI-generated humor can stimulate this endorphin release, potentially reducing stress and anxiety levels. Humor’s ability to illuminate life’s lighter side can bolster our self-perception and outlook.

AI-generated humour offers fresh perspectives and insights, helping us cultivate a sunnier disposition. Humor serves as a powerful tool for building rapport and establishing connections with others. AI-generated humor can facilitate this by offering shared experiences and generating laughter. Humour offers a coping mechanism by providing a sense of perspective and reducing feelings of isolation in challenging situations. AI-generated humor can provide alternative viewpoints to help individuals navigate their problems”, said Banerjee.

The future of AI-generated humour appears promising. As generative AI continues to evolve, numerous innovative applications emerge, including:

Banerjee says, “AI could revolutionise mental health treatment by tailoring humor therapies to individuals’ unique needs, potentially transforming how we address mental health issues. Virtual reality experiences may be designed to provide immersive humor therapy, offering novel approaches to treating mental health conditions.”

The potential applications for AI-generated humor are limitless. We can only imagine the many ways generative AI will be used to improve our lives and bring us joy as it continues to advance.

While AI-generated humour holds immense promise, several challenges warrant attention. One issue is that since AI might not always understand the subtleties of human humour, it is possible for AI-generated humor to be offensive or inappropriate. Due to its limited training dataset, AI-generated humor can occasionally become monotonous or lack originality. But given the many benefits that AI-generated humor offers, it seems possible to get past these obstacles. We predict the emergence of humor that is both entertaining and good for mental health as generative AI develops.

Speaking on the next stage of generative AI, Banerjee adds, “Generative AI is moving towards cognitive AI, which will be a more advanced version that can diagnose problems and revert to a previous state. It will make use of the power of developing more precise models to comprehend not only the causes of human emotions but also to comprehend and foresee how a person may proceed along the path to mental health and wellness. It is possible to increase smiles and happiness by using cognitive AI to introduce a little humor.”