Now, a software to detect sarcasm

Israeli researchers have developed a computer algorithm capable of identifying sarcasm in written text.

Devised by computer scientists at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the algorithm could pave the way for more sophisticated communication between humans and computers - the Holy Grail of artificial intelligence.

The new formula has been programmed to recognise sarcasm in lengthy texts by analysing patterns of phrases and punctuation often used to indicate irony.

In tests on 66,000 product reviews posted on the Amazon shopping website, the algorithm had an impressive 77% success rate in picking out sarcastic comments - arguably higher than some humans.

The researchers 'trained' the algorithm to recognise sarcasm by teaching it nearly 5,500 sentences from Amazon reviews that human volunteers had marked as either sarcastic or non-sarcastic.

"We found strong features that recognize sarcastic utterances, however, a combination of more subtle features served best in recognizing various facets of sarcasm," the Telegraph quoted the study authors as saying.

According to the researchers, sarcasm recognition could one day be used by review aggregator websites such as Amazon to decide how reviews and comments should be ranked.