“That’s what she said” computer developed!
Image: Rachael Voorhees/Flickr
Scientists have created a system whereby a computer can finally identify double entendre… especially of the “That’s what she said” (TWSS) variety!
You know the joke:
Aaron referring to his late-evening basketball practice – “I was trying all night, but I just could not get it in!”
Betty – “That’s what she said”
Their system is called Double Entendre via Nouns Transfer or DEviaNT. You remember we learned about Double Entendre in an earlier lesson.
After much programming, the system was able to even identify this phrase as having TWSS potential… and they specifically used this example:
“Don’t you think these buns are a little too big for this meat?”
These results along with the Double Entendre examples will be presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics in June.
You can read more about DEviaNT here.
Below is Alfred Hitchcock uttering a very early version of the “That’s what she said” joke from 1929:



