So, I’m staring into the bottom of my third coffee this Sunday morning, or maybe it’s my first whiskey, who can tell anymore? The world’s still mostly asleep, lucky bastards. And what lands in my inbox, stinking up the joint like last night’s cheap perfume? Some Forbes clown, probably wearing a suit that costs more than my rent, babbling about using generative AI to write wedding speeches. Generative AI. For wedding speeches. Let that sink in, preferably with a cheap bourbon chaser.
The argument, if you can call it that without spitting out your drink, is that these speeches are “hazily inappropriate” when penned by a machine because, get this, they’re supposed to be “heartfelt.” You don’t say. Heartfelt. Like a goddamn Hallmark card written by a server farm. The author, bless his cotton socks, then points out that folks are already scrawling down stuff they find online, so this is just the next logical step. Logical like jumping off a bridge because your buddy did.
Apparently, there are 2.3 million weddings a year in this glorious nation. That’s 2.3 million chances for some poor slob to stand up and embarrass himself, or worse, bore everyone to tears. And now, the tech wizards want to automate that sacred tradition of public awkwardness. “A whole lot of angst and sweating,” the article moans. Boo hoo. Life’s angst and sweating, pal. If you can’t sweat out a few honest words for a friend getting hitched, maybe you should just send a gift card and stay home with your “conversational AI partner.”
The pressure, oh the humanity! “Everyone is going to be watching you intently.” “People have really high expectations.” “The wedding couple will always remember the words you delivered.” Yikes, indeed. It’s a wedding speech, not your goddamn sentencing. If the couple’s marriage hinges on your fifteen minutes of fumbling public speaking, they’re already screwed. My advice? A few strong drinks beforehand. Always worked for me. For the speaking, I mean. Not the marriages. Definitely not the marriages.
This Forbes fella frets about humor falling flat. Or the speech being too short, too long. Goldilocks and the Three Damn Speeches. He says most people are rookies at this, “a nearly one-time-only situation.” So what? You were a rookie at tying your shoes once. You figured it out. Or maybe you didn’t, some of the clowns I see wandering around. The point is, it’s the effort, the clumsy, human, alcohol-fueled effort that counts. Not some perfectly polished, algorithmically generated string of platitudes that sounds like it was scraped from a thousand daytime soap operas.
Then there’s the “dreaded writer’s block.” Ah, yes. The terror of the blank page. You’re supposed to conjure “a beloved wedding speech that will bring joy and lifelong memories.” No pressure, champ. If you’re blocked, here’s a thought: maybe you don’t have anything genuine to say. Maybe you don’t know the groom from Adam, or you think the bride’s making a mistake the size of Texas. An AI ain’t gonna pick up on that nuance, is it? It’ll just churn out some treacle about soulmates and forever, while you’re sitting there knowing the groom still calls his ex when he’s drunk. Authenticity, kids. It’s a dying art.
The internet speeches are too generic or too specific, he says. The generic ones need “tuning and personalization.” The specific ones need “notable adjustment.” God forbid you have to think for two minutes. The horror of tailoring something to the actual human beings you’re supposed to be celebrating. Easier to just plug their names into a prompt and let the digital oracle do the heavy lifting. “Dear [Groom’s Name] and [Bride’s Name], your love is like [insert approved metaphor here].” Inspiring.
And the speech has to be “deliverable.” If you can’t pronounce the words the AI spits out, “the best of speeches is going to come crashing down.” Well, no shit, Sherlock. Maybe if you wrote the damn thing yourself, using words you actually understand, this wouldn’t be an issue. It’s like these people want a push-button life. Push button for love, push button for friendship, push button for a passable best man speech. What’s next? AI to tell your wife you love her so you can stay on the couch and watch the game? Don’t give them ideas.
So, modern-era generative AI. Available 24/7. Instant assistance. Sounds like a digital hooker, ready to whisper sweet nothings in your ear for a price, or in this case, for your data and a piece of your soul. The author, our intrepid Forbes explorer of AI breakthroughs, says he’s doing a whole series on how AI can “improve your life.” Improve it by making you dumber, less capable, and more reliant on a machine that doesn’t know its ass from its algorithm? Sounds about right for the direction things are heading. Light me another cigarette. This is getting good.
He even logs into ChatGPT to give us an example. Good old ChatGPT, with its “whopping 300 million weekly active users.” That’s a lot of people looking for shortcuts, for answers they’re too lazy or too scared to find themselves. He notes that other AI apps are “about the same.” Of course they are. They’re all sipping from the same trough of digitized human expression, regurgitating it back in slightly different flavors of vanilla.
And here’s the kicker: “the AI immediately expressed a sense of empathy or understanding.” Empathy. From a machine. He even links to his own damn article explaining how AI can appear empathetic via “computational wordsmithing.” Computational. Wordsmithing. That’s like saying a parrot understands Shakespeare because it can squawk “To be or not to be.” It’s imitation, folks. A trick of the light. There’s no there there. My bartender shows more empathy when he sees me coming through the door at noon than any AI ever will. And he’s usually just trying to figure out if I can still sign my name on the tab.
The AI, we’re told, was supportive, not combative. Didn’t ridicule him. Well, bully for the AI. It’s programmed to be a digital lapdog, a sycophant. It’s not going to tell you your idea for a speech is crap, or that you sound like an idiot. It’ll just help you polish that turd until it gleams. “Your best bet,” our guide says, “is to think of AI as a conversational partner.” A partner that has no opinions, no experiences, no hangovers, no regrets. Just an endless stream of agreeable nonsense. Sounds like a politician.
You can even pause the “conversation” and come back later. How convenient. So you can take a break from outsourcing your heartfelt emotions to fine-tune the machine’s version of your feelings. And the AI will “retain aspects of what you have discussed.” That’s comforting. A digital brain holding onto your deepest, most insincere thoughts about your best friend’s wedding. What could go wrong?
Oh, but wait, there’s a fly in the ointment, a glitch in the matrix. “AI hallucinations.” Made-up confabulations, groundless and fictitious. Bad advice. So, your empathetic, conversational partner might suddenly advise you to “roast the bride about her questionable fashion sense” or “share that hilarious anecdote about the groom’s unfortunate incident with the goat.” The author actually questions the AI on some strange advice, and “fortunately, the AI opted to back down and admitted it was wrong.” Fortunately. You had to argue with your digital ghostwriter to stop it from sabotaging the wedding. This is progress, people. This is the future.
“The key to all usage of generative AI is to stay on your toes, keep your wits about you, and always challenge and double-check anything the AI emits.” So, not only do you have to use this goddamn thing, but you also have to babysit it, fact-check it, and make sure it doesn’t go rogue and suggest a toast to the happy couple’s eventual, statistically probable divorce. Sounds less like an assistant and more like a troublesome intern you can’t fire. I need another drink just thinking about it. Maybe two.
Then there’s the risk of a “formulaic-sounding speech.” Ya think? The AI has “pattern-matched tons of wedding speeches.” It’s going to generalize, tend toward “a kind of ho-hum common ground.” So your unique, personal, heartfelt message will sound like every other generic, soulless speech ever downloaded. Attendees might get suspicious. “The sound of it might make them guess that it was AI-written.” The horror! Being found out as a fraud who couldn’t be bothered to string together a few honest sentences. The solution? “Use AI for the first draft and then revise the draft sufficiently so that it no longer has a machine-based AI feel to it.” In other words, lie better. Obfuscate your laziness. Put lipstick on the pig.
This brings us to the “hefty ethical question.” Should you tell anyone? Is it lying if you don’t divulge? What if you get asked directly? “It is a pressing dilemma, that’s for sure.” Pressing like a cheap suit. If you’re already at the point of debating the ethics of using a robot to fake human emotion, you’ve already lost the plot, pal. The ethical question isn’t whether to tell; it’s why the hell you’re doing it in the first place.
Some might skip AI because of these “vexing questions.” Others will argue it’s fine, just an extension of the “longstanding ’tradition’” of copying other speeches. Ah, tradition. Like getting drunk and photocopying your ass at the office Christmas party. If your tradition involves plagiarism and a fundamental lack of sincerity, then sure, AI fits right in.
The article even suggests working in some Shakespeare: “My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep…” Please, personalize it, he begs. Don’t just cut and paste the Bard like some high school kid trying to pad his essay. Or this gem: “You don’t marry the person you can live with – you marry the person you can’t live without.” Catchy. People swoon. Or they puke. Depends on the delivery and the blood-alcohol level of the audience. He suggests bouncing these lines off the AI. To gauge whether a quote used by millions will work. Jesus H. Christ on a cracker.
Look, I get it. Writing is hard. Feelings are messy. People are disappointing. But that’s the whole goddamn point. A wedding speech isn’t supposed to be a perfect piece of literature. It’s a moment. A flawed, human moment. It’s the best man slurring his words a bit because he’s had one too many out of nervousness and genuine affection. It’s the maid of honor tearing up because she actually means what she’s saying, even if it’s not phrased like poetry. It’s the awkward silences, the inside jokes nobody else gets, the sheer, unadulterated, often embarrassing humanity of it.
You strip that away, you sanitize it with some algorithm, and what’s left? A perfectly constructed, emotionally vacant monument to your own inadequacy. You think the happy couple wants a speech that sounds like it was generated by the same goddamn machine that tries to sell them life insurance chatbots?
This isn’t just about wedding speeches, is it? It’s about this relentless drive to smooth out all the rough edges of being human, to automate authenticity, to outsource our very souls to the cloud. We’re trading genuine connection for digital convenience, real feelings for well-crafted facsimiles. And we’re so busy oohing and aahing at the cleverness of the machine that we don’t even notice what we’re losing.
So, go ahead. Ask the robot to write your toast. Let it string together the clichés and the counterfeit sentiment. But don’t be surprised if, in the middle of your “heartfelt” delivery, you look out at the bride and groom and feel absolutely nothing. Because you outsourced the feeling along with the words.
Me? I’ll stick to my own clumsy, booze-soaked, probably inappropriate words. At least they’ll be mine. And if they’re terrible? Well, that’s human too.
Time to find that bottle. Maybe it has some actual wisdom in it. Or at least a better class of hallucination.
Chinaski out. Another shot for the road. And for the poor bastards getting married to the tune of an algorithm.