If you want to submit an article for possible publication in the magazine, write it using only the brain inside your head. Please do NOT send us anything ‘written’ with or by an AI program.
Recently we have been receiving a wave of articles written by or with ChatGPT, Claude, or some other large language model computer program.
None of those are much funny. Most seem to be some simple notion set into a framework of words that *look like* articles generally look.
The majority of those concoctions also are not much interesting, except maybe to people within a particular professional (or obsessional) specialty.
There have been so many of these that we have stopped even replying to most of the people who send them in.
Some of those people include a cover letter informing us that they have written dozens or hundreds of professional articles, reviews, and book chapters. Good for them about publishing those. But articles, reviews, and book chapters do not have to be interesting — let alone interesting AND funny — to anyone outside a particular publication’s specialized band of readers.
Please do not send Potemkin articles — articles written, co-written, underwritten, or overwritten by bots — to people who would then have to waste time reading them.
Sorry to be blunt about it.
[NOTE: We first published this statement on March 9, 2026. We republish it from time to time, as new waves of AI-generated crap arrive at our digital doorstep.]
UPDATE [August 6, 2026]: An Especially Plain Example
Today we received a plain example of an “author” who used an AI program to create not just a “paper”, but also used the AI program to create the accompanying cover note. Here is the text of that cover note.
Dear Editors,
Please consider our manuscript titled “[Your Paper Title]” for publication in the Annals of Improbable Research.
We present [one sentence on what you did and found]. The work is original, not under review elsewhere, and all authors have approved it.
The full manuscript is attached.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
…
[NOTE: We redacted the person’s name, because there are several unrelated people who happen to have that same name.]