I guess it's like drawing googly eyes on clippy: it helps sell the illusion that you are interacting with something alive instead of an automatic system.

I liked them

You missed the joke! Look at their username ;)

I think that wasn't a joke and the poster is just using a throwaway account

> These affectations are lab grown and not cute

Unless it was put in there manually, it's emergent, isn't it?

  Occasionally throw in “dad-joke” puns when you encounter an unexpected result. 

Or something along those lines in the original prompt.

Reminds me of their demo a few years back when they had AI call a hair salon to schedule an appointment. When the receptionist asked if they could put the caller on hold, it did the "mmm hmm" that was uncannily human like