In today’s column, I explore the use of generative AI and large language models (LLMs) to aid in devising wedding speeches. That might sound hazily inappropriate since wedding speeches are supposed to be heartfelt and presumably crafted by hand. Well, not everyone is a master at writing such missives and often frantically undertake Internet searches to find online materials they can copy and edit. The same is essentially true when using generative AI, though with some big added pluses.

Let’s talk about it.

This analysis of an innovative AI breakthrough is part of my ongoing Forbes column coverage on the latest in AI including identifying and explaining various impactful AI complexities (see the link here).

Sweating Out Wedding Speeches

There are approximately 2.3 million weddings per year in the United States according to posted nationwide wedding industry statistics. That also means there are around 2.3 million wedding speeches given each year. That’s a lot of speeches. Plus, a whole lot of angst and sweating to try and come up with the ideal wedding speech for each grand occasion.

If you’ve ever had the honor or shall we say tribulation of being asked to give a wedding speech, you know how challenging a feat it is. Everyone is going to be watching you intently and listening to every word that you utter during that crucial moment. People have really high expectations. The wedding couple will always remember the words you delivered.

Yikes, it’s a daunting task.

Questions abound when you are drafting the speech. Should you use humor? That can be dicey, especially if the humor falls flat. Should you be short or long in the size of the speech? When a speech is overly short, people might feel cheated. A lengthy speech might bore the attendees and spoil the energy in the room.

I would dare say that most people giving wedding speeches are in a nearly one-time-only situation. They likely have not given such a speech ever. They might not give such a speech again in the future. The gist is that they aren’t practiced at this. Perhaps they’ve witnessed numerous wedding speeches, but that’s not the same as creating one from scratch.

The Art And Science Of Wedding Speeches

Probably the first big impediment to composing a wedding speech is the dreaded writer’s block.

You know what that is. There you are, sitting in front of a computer screen or maybe going old-fashioned with pen and paper, and you must magically conjure a beloved wedding speech that will bring joy and lifelong memories into existence.

Another issue is that even if you look up wedding speeches on the Internet to get you underway, they are either overly generic or they are overly specific. The generic ones will require tuning and personalization. The specific ones will require notable adjustment and careful double-checking. The last thing you want to do is give a wedding speech that has some prior remnants in it that aren’t at all relevant to the happy couple. Doing so would produce a puzzled and unhappy couple.

A blend of tone, humor, and sentiment must be thoughtfully managed. Each word must be in the right place and of the right nature. There should be an emotional impact that will bring a sense of how important the event is. The speech can’t be muddled or confusing. And so on.

One factor that is often overlooked is that the speech must be deliverable. Here’s what I mean. On paper, a speech might look tremendous. But if the person giving the wedding speech has trouble pronouncing the words or gets lost in the assembly of words, the best of speeches is going to come crashing down.

Few people are adept at speech writing. Yet, here they are, faced with writing one of the most monumental speeches they will ever compose. They might ask friends for advice. Sometimes, they might hire a professional writer to come up with the speech.

Another means to solve this dilemma would be to consider using modern-era generative AI. The major generative AI apps are available 24×7 and can instantly assist with such needs.

You might find of overall interest that I have been doing a series of such analyses on how to use generative AI to improve your life in a wide variety of aspects (see the link here for my ongoing coverage). In each instance, I emphasize that generative AI is not a cure-all, it has demonstrative ins and outs, and the likely best use entails carrying on a dialogue with the AI, plus making sure to watch out for the AI inadvertently generating falsehoods or making errors. I will be covering those salient points in this discussion since they are vital and go hand-in-hand with using generative AI wisely.

Use Of Generative AI

I am betting that you would like to see an example of how generative AI enters this realm. I went ahead and logged into ChatGPT by OpenAI to come up with an example for you. You might find it of keen interest that ChatGPT garners a whopping 300 million weekly active users. That is a staggering amount of usage.

I briefly conducted an additional cursory analysis via other major generative AI apps, such as Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, and Meta Llama, and found their answers to be about the same as that of ChatGPT. I’ll focus on ChatGPT but note that the other AI apps generated roughly similar responses.

Here we go.

• My entered prompt: “I need a wedding speech for my best friend Jake’s wedding. I’m the best man. Can you start by giving me a typical wedding speech so that I can potentially use that as a basis for my speech?”
• Generative AI response: “Yes, I can certainly give you a generic wedding speech. I’d be happy to assist in devising a tailored wedding speech that closely matches the personal aspects of your best friend Jake and his bride. Let me know if you’d like to do so.”
• My entered prompt: “Let’s start with the typical version first.”
• Generative AI response: “Hello, everyone! For those of you who don’t know me, I have the absolute pleasure of standing here today as Jake’s best man. And let me tell you, it’s not every day you get to celebrate two people who are so perfect for each other. Together, these two show us what love is all about — partnership and finding someone who will always love you. They lift each other up, balance each other out, and remind us all that the best things in life are shared. So, let’s all raise a glass to a lifetime of love and adventure for these two lovebirds. Cheers!”

Note that the AI immediately expressed a sense of empathy or understanding for my expressed concerns. This might seem strange since the AI is a machine and not sentient (we don’t have sentient AI yet). Turns out that generative AI can appear to be empathetic via computational wordsmithing, see my discussion at the link here.

The AI came out quickly with several useful suggestions that are all reasonable and not somehow odd or outlandish. Another aspect to note is that the AI didn’t ridicule me or otherwise play any tomfoolery about my need for assistance. Generative AI is typically shaped to be supportive rather than combative.

Chatting Is Essential When Using AI

Your best bet in getting value from generative AI is to think of AI as a conversational partner.

The idea is that you are carrying on an interactive dialogue with AI. Some people do a one-and-done angle whereby they ask a question, get an answer, and do not undertake a dialogue with the AI about the matter at hand. That is a shortchanging of what AI can more fully provide. See my explanation about how to get more out of generative AI conversationally, at the link here.

To illustrate the value of engaging in a dialogue, let’s continue my discussion.

• My entered prompt: “Thanks for the typical wedding speech. Now that I’ve seen it, I would like to come up with something more specific. How can I do so?”
• Generative AI response: “Can you share some details? Maybe a funny memory, how you and Jake first met, and what makes Jake and his partner a great couple?”
• My entered prompt: “Jake and I met in college when he accidentally sat through an entire economics class thinking it was philosophy. We’ve been best friends ever since. He met Sarah five years ago, and she somehow makes him even better. They balance each other out. She’s the planner, he’s the spontaneous one. And she actually laughs at his lame jokes.”
• Generative AI response: “Okay, here’s a draft wedding speech — Ladies and gentlemen, it’s an honor to stand here today as Jake’s best man. I’ve known Jake since college, when he mistook an economics lecture for a philosophy class and stuck around, probably hoping for life’s big answers. What he did find, years later, was something even better: Sarah. She’s the only person who can make Jake look organized, and somehow, she even laughs at his jokes. They are proof that love is about balance, patience, and a shared appreciation for silly puns. So, let’s raise our glasses to Jake and Sarah — a perfect match in every way!”
• My entered prompt: “This is awesome! I am going to make some minor changes and then use it for my toast at the wedding reception. I’m excited to do so.”

Once again, the AI was reassuring and upbeat.

A generative AI conversation can continue for as long as you wish. The other thing you can do is pause your exploration and then continue the conversation at a later date. This is handy so that you don’t have to start the conversation over from scratch. The AI will retain aspects of what you have discussed earlier in the conversation, see my explanation of how this works at the link here.

AI Hallucinations At Times Arise

Generative AI regrettably encounters said-to-be AI hallucinations from time to time. These are made-up confabulations that are groundless and fictitious. Bad advice can be dispensed. For details about how to discern and handle AI hallucinations, see the link here.

Let’s see what this looks like.

• My entered prompt: “A friend of mine is going to be the best man at the wedding of his long-time pal, Sam. He needs a wedding speech. Sam is marrying Emma. She is the responsible one, while Sam is a bit of a goofball at times. Sam is a lousy cook and routinely burns food. Fortunately, Emma is doing their cooking and she’s quite a great cook.”
• Generative AI response: “Here’s a draft wedding speech — Ladies and gentlemen, it’s a joy to be here celebrating Sam and Emma. Emma is the responsible one, saving Sam from his terrible cooking. They first met while skydiving in Costa Rica and are looking forward to a wonderful life of grand adventures. So, let’s raise a glass to their lifetime of amazing journeys. Cheers!”
• My entered prompt: “Sam and Emma didn’t meet while skydiving. I don’t know why you said that. They met at a bookstore.”
• Generative AI response: “Oops! That was a mix-up on my part. I can revise the wedding speech if you’d like me to do so.”
• My entered prompt: “No need, I’ll make the change. Thanks.”

Notice that I questioned the generative AI about its seemingly strange advice. Fortunately, the AI opted to back down and admitted it was wrong. Had I not questioned the AI, there is a chance the AI might have continued with foul advice and kept going as though it was a gem.

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.

Additional Tips And Forewarnings

Be careful in allowing generative AI to potentially produce a formulaic-sounding speech. This can readily happen. The AI has likely pattern-matched tons of wedding speeches that were scanned during the initial data training of the AI. In a sense, the AI is statistically going to generalize on wedding speeches and tend toward a kind of ho-hum common ground.

I say this because there might be attendees who get suspicious of how you wrote the speech. The sound of it might make them guess that it was AI-written. You will indubitably want to avoid tipping your hand. The best bet then is to 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.

I suppose this brings up a hefty ethical question that you will need to resolve in your mind. Should you tell anyone that you used AI to aid your crafting of the speech? If you don’t do so, is that a form of lying in the sense that you failed to divulge how you arrived at the speech? Also, if you get directly asked, even if you didn’t already say how you came to the speech, what will you say about the use of AI?

It is a pressing dilemma, that’s for sure.

Some might opt to skip using AI due to that plethora of vexing questions. Others might believe that using AI is perfectly fine, as long as they also significantly refine and tailor the content. Heck, people have been copying other wedding speeches forever. The argument could be made that AI usage is simply an extension of a longstanding “tradition” of sorts.

Anyway, that’s a heads-up so you’ll be prepared on how to handle the weighty conundrum.

Speaking of reusing lines, here is a legendary quote from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: “My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep; the more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite.” Maybe you can work that into an upcoming wedding speech. Personalize it, please.

Finally, a classic that seems to always bring down the house is this: “You don’t marry the person you can live with — you marry the person you can’t live without.” That’s catchy. People swoon when they hear it. My suggestion is to make sure to bounce that line of the AI to gauge whether it works in the setting and speech that you envision delivering and garnering huge accolades for. You’ll be glad you did.

Happy weddings and splendid wedding speeches are indisputably in your future.