# Let's be Humorous: Knowledge Enhanced Humor Generation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.13317 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.13317/

## Key facts

- Cited by 10 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 28 Apr 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- [Let's Think Outside the Box: Exploring Leap-of-Thought in Large Language Models with Creative Humor Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02439/) (2023)
- [Innovative Thinking, Infinite Humor: Humor Research of Large Language Models through Structured Thought Leaps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.10370/) (2024)
- [A Causality-aware Paradigm for Evaluating Creativity of Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.15147/) (2025)
- [Witscript 3: A Hybrid AI System for Improvising Jokes in a Conversation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.02695/) (2023)
- [Prompt to GPT-3: Step-by-Step Thinking Instructions for Humor Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.13195/) (2023)
- [Witscript 2: A System for Generating Improvised Jokes Without Wordplay](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.03036/) (2023)
- [Exploring Chinese Humor Generation: A Study on Two-Part Allegorical Sayings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.10781/) (2024)
- [HumorGen: Cognitive Synergy for Humor Generation in Large Language Models via Persona-Based Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.09629/) (2026)
- [Prediction, Selection, and Generation: Exploration of Knowledge-Driven Conversation System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.11454/) (2021)
- [KoWit-24: A Richly Annotated Dataset of Wordplay in News Headlines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.01510/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The generation of humor is an under-explored and challenging problem. Previous works mainly utilize templates or replace phrases to generate humor. However, few works focus on freer forms and the background knowledge of humor. The linguistic theory of humor defines the structure of a humor sentence as set-up and punchline. In this paper, we explore how to generate a punchline given the set-up with the relevant knowledge. We propose a framework that can fuse the knowledge to end-to-end models. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to generate punchlines with knowledge enhanced model. Furthermore, we create the first humor-knowledge dataset. The experimental results demonstrate that our method can make use of knowledge to generate fluent, funny punchlines, which outperforms several baselines.