It happens to all of us: You text your friend a mildly funny video. They text back, “LOL 😂😂😂.”
You think to yourself, “I mean, it wasn’t that funny.”
The question is, did your friend send a sincere LOL? Or were they faking it?
Artist and tech connoisseur Brian Moore has come up with the perfect solution to answer that question: the LOL Verifier.
I made this thing called LOL Verifier: a device that only lets you type lol if you’ve actually laughed out loud pic.twitter.com/Gsc63yGEm0
— Brian Moore (@lanewinfield) January 3, 2023
“I wanted to figure out if there was a way to make something that would actually verify it,” Moore said. “Finally I figured out a way to make it into a physical piece of hardware that sits between your keyboard and your computer and sniffs for an LOL.”
The device is a small black box connected to your computer with a cable. When you type “LOL,” the device listens for actual laughter, and if it detects it, the light turns green, and an “✅ LOL verified at [time]” message appears. This way, your friends can be sure that you actually laughed out loud, not just typed out a half–hearted response.
In order to create the LOL Verifier, Moore had to record hundreds of laughter samples, which he said took about half an hour. He also had to train the AI model to detect both laughter and non–laughter sounds, such as keyboard clicks, background noise and silence.
Moore does use his invention personally, and he said his friends feel honored when they receive an LOL verification from him. In the future, he may expand access to the device and even release the code, so others can build one for themselves.
“It’s been really fun to use because I’ve realized just how many times I type out LOL and don’t mean anything,” Moore said. “So it’s really keeping me incredibly honest. I’m at least checking the box for my New Year’s resolution of being a more honest person.”
