A computer that has been designed to generate its own witty one-liners following a simple set of rules, has been presented at the Association for Computational Linguistics annual meeting in Bulgaria.

The system, which has been developed by scientists at the University of Edinburgh, 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.

Some of the jokes produced by the computerized comedian can be sexist, while others appear more surreal than genuinely funny, according to Times Live.

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."

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.

Matthews has presented the computer at the Association for Computational Linguistics annual meeting in Bulgaria.

The annual meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) took place in Bulgaria’s capital Sofia August 4-9, 2013.

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