Comedy analysis
Classify joke structure, tone, topic, rhythm, callbacks, or audience fit.
Community hackathon
Build with Gemma: Humor Genome NYC
A hybrid AI hackathon exploring how open models can understand, generate, organize, and support comedy. Online submissions lead to a live NYC showcase on July 25.
Online submissions Live NYC showcase July 25, 2026 Build with Gemma
What this is
A creative-tech hackathon for AI and comedy.
Humor Genome NYC is a Build with Gemma community hackathon for builders, comedians, designers, researchers, writers, and curious people exploring the intersection of AI and comedy.
This is not about replacing comedians. It is about using open models to study, organize, test, and expand how humor works.
Why humor
Humor is one of the hardest and most human tests for open models.
Humor is timing, context, culture, surprise, risk, and shared understanding. That makes it one of the most interesting places to test open AI models.
Humor Genome NYC asks what AI can reveal about joke structure, audience fit, creative iteration, performance context, and the messy human signals behind what makes something funny.
Timing Context Surprise Audience Callbacks NYC Open models
What people can build
Projects can be practical, weird, researchy, performable, or all of the above.
Writing and feedback tools
Help comedians brainstorm, rewrite, compare premises, or pressure-test a set.
Audience and scene intelligence
Explore venue fit, crowd type, local references, and performance context.
Creative agents
Build Gemma-based editors, roast partners, premise challengers, or set reviewers.
Dataset and discovery projects
Organize clips, transcripts, joke tags, venues, performer notes, or historical patterns.
Live showcase experiments
Create interactive demos that can be shown in front of an NYC audience.
Who should join
You do not need one perfect label.
You do not need to be a professional comedian or Kaggle expert. You just need curiosity about AI, humor, or creative tools.
AI builders Kaggle users Comedians Writers Designers Product people Researchers Students Event people Photographers Video people Judges Mentors
Timeline
Online now, live in NYC on July 25.
Now
Join on Kaggle, explore ideas, form teams, and start building.
Submissions
Open now on Kaggle. See Kaggle for deadline and rules.
July 25, 2026
Live NYC showcase.
After the showcase
Selected projects, contributors, and learnings become part of the longer-term Humor Genome community.
How to participate
Pick the lane that matches your curiosity.
Submit on Kaggle
Projects should include a short writeup, a working demo or prototype, and a 2-minute demo video. Full rules and submission details are on the Kaggle competition page.
Join on KaggleContribute
Help with engineering, design, judging, outreach, event operations, photography, video, or community building.
Become a ContributorAttend or follow
Watch for live showcase details, support the builders, and follow what comes next after July 25.
Showcase details coming soon
What makes a strong project?
Useful demos with a clear point of view.
Uses Gemma in a meaningful way
Explores humor, comedy, audience, or performance
Shows a working demo or clear prototype
Explains what was learned
About Gemma
Open models in a creative, cultural, human domain.
Gemma is a family of lightweight, state-of-the-art open models from Google, built from the same research and technology used to create the Gemini models. Humor Genome NYC uses the Build with Gemma community hackathon format to explore what open models can do in a creative, cultural, and highly human domain.
Organizer
Hosted by Humor Genome NYC.
Humor Genome NYC is a public Kaggle competition with online submissions and a live NYC showcase on July 25, 2026.
It is organized with the broader Humor Genome and Midtown Show ecosystem.