Is using AI to write a best man speech a good idea?

Writing a best man speech for a wedding is a big deal. You want to make people laugh, share some sweet stories about the groom, and ensure the speech sounds right. In an era where artificial intelligence (AI) can draft essays, compose poetry, and even generate art, it's tempting to wonder: Can AI help write a best man speech? 

The short answer? 

It's not so simple.

The Objectives of a Best Man Speech

The best man has to achieve a lot with his speech, from entertaining the audience to painting a vivid, affectionate portrait of the groom. The speech should:

1. be well crafted with a good structure, suitable to the occasion. 
2. be entertaining. The speech is expected to be humorous, engaging, and a highlight of the celebration.
3. be personal: It should reflect a deep understanding and bond with the groom, sharing anecdotes that reveal his character.
4. be in the voice of the speaker
5. be well delivered: it should be eloquently delivered and fit within the time allotted. 

There are certain things that the best man needs to say (like congratulating the newlyweds) and other topics he may or may not need to cover, depending on who else is speaking and what they are saying:

• thank the groom (or bride) for toasting the bridesmaids, on their behalf (or not),
• read out cards from people who couldn’t be present (or not),
• propose a toast (or not),
• and much more..

The Shortcomings of Generative AI Speeches

ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and other Large Language Models (LLM) can create great speeches. Their output will mostly be well structured, well written (if sometimes a bit convoluted), and likely to be entertaining. But the problem is, if you leave it to the LLM, it will just deliver on points 1 and 2 of the best man’s speech objectives listed above. While it may be well crafted and probably entertaining, it will have some serious shortcomings: 

• it won’t be personal
• it won’t be coordinated with the other speeches
• it won’t include some important things you would otherwise have included
• It won’t include content you chose. For example, the LLM will pick a funny line for you, but it might not fit your sense of humor. 

What would it take to do it well?

If you want to create a great speech with an LLM like ChatGPT, Claude 3, Gemini, GroqChat, Mistral Chat, Perplexity AI, etc., you have to be very deliberate and precise in telling it what you want. In tech-industry speak, you need to write great prompts. Prompt engineering is probably an even harder skill to master than speechwriting - it's a bit much to expect an average wedding speaker to be able to do that. But even a great prompt engineer needs to have context of what other speakers are going to stay. And you still need to feed it with your personal stories, thoughts, and your choices of wisecracks, quotations, or whatever. It can be done, but there are easier ways. 

That's where we come in. At WeWriteSpeeches, we use Generative AI for a very particular part of the speechwriting process. Here's what we offer:

• Using a powerful specialized questionnaire, we ask each speaker the right questions to collect the information we need, with follow-up questions as appropriate. 
• We allow users to select from our curated content, which includes funny lines, Bible verses, quotations, and more. 
• We allow them to write anecdotes or other personal content where appropriate and prompt them on how to do it well.
• We build out a structure for the speech based on the speech type and the circumstances.
• Then, we blend all the content, using LLM/Generative AI technology to produce an amazing draft speech.

WeWriteSpeeches is all about mixing our speech-writing skills with your own content and experiences, blending in some help from the latest Generative AI/LLM technologies. We want to make sure your speech is memorable and personal, truly reflecting your friendship with the groom, all while entertaining the guests.

Generative AI isn't enough on its own, but neither are the anecdotes, jokes and sentiments that go to make up a speech. That's where we come up, pulling it all together, and structuring it to ensure your best man speech is one of the highlights of the wedding. Wedding speeches are too important to be left to chance.

You can read about our ESSENTIAL PLUS speechwriting packages here.