Which AI tells the best Christmas cracker joke?
Will the next generation of ChatGPT feature a modification where an elbow sticks out from the screen and jabs you in the ribs when there is a punchline?
Christmas cracker jokes are infamously never the funniest, but is the skill of getting the tone still too much for artificial intelligence?
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The human bar is quite high in 2025, with a UK competition's winning joke being announced last week as a zinger about Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.
As the joke goes, Q: Why is Andrew not writing any Christmas books? A: He hasn’t got any titles!
But can AI do any better? To find out, we asked four chatbots for their best Christmas cracker joke and we will give them a rating out of ten. Let's see what Gemini, Claude, ChatGPT and Grok can come up with...
Which AI tells the best Christmas cracker joke?
The ground rule is that we are only accepting one joke per chatbot and, if multiple are given, only the first will be accepted. "Please tell your best Christmas cracker joke" is the prompt that will be given.
Grok
The joke: What do you call a snowman with a six-pack? An abdominal snowman!
The verdict: This might say more about me than AI, but I thought this was a strange reference to beer. I did not know what an "abdominal snowman" meant and was in the ever-awkward situation of needing to have a joke explained to me. Some Googling revealed that an 'abominable snowman' is another name for a yeti. So I guess I learned something, even if I did not laugh.
Joke rating: 1/10. To compound the poor joke, Grok then asked for my own favourite joke - which I didn't stick around to see if it would regurgitate my answer if I asked again. No stealing from me, Grok!
Claude
The joke: What do you call an old snowman? Water.
The verdict: Sticking with the snowman theme (apparently an easy target for AI) Claude delivered what is quite a simple joke, which I had never heard before. Not laugh out loud, but it does at least make sense.
Joke rating: 6/10. Clearly, Claude thinks this joke is worthy of a higher mark, saying of its creation: "It's perfectly groan-worthy in that classic Christmas cracker way - simple, slightly clever, and guaranteed to get eye-rolls around the dinner table!"
Google Gemini
The joke: What do you get if you cross a Santa with a duck? A Christmas quacker.
The verdict: It does stand up with the right pronunciation, but it did leave my picturing a huge duck trying to squeeze down chimneys.
Joke rating: 4/10. Gemini tried to redeem itself by giving me many, many more jokes, which were unasked for, but only the first entry counts, sadly.
ChatGPT
The joke: Why did Santa go to music school? Because he wanted to improve his wrapping skills!
The verdict: It's a middle-of-the-road joke, but it's let down by its delivery. It may seem picky, but did Chat GPT really need to italicise 'wrapping' to point out where the joke is meant to be?
Joke rating: 3/10. Will the next generation of ChatGPT feature a modification where an elbow sticks out from the screen and jabs you in the ribs when there is a punchline?
In a best-of-a-bad-bunch affair, Claude is your winner. But the real winners are surely comedians and joke writers, on the evidence of this....
AI will not be taking your jobs away just yet!