Creating Eulogies Using AI?

When I was asked to give a speech at a wedding, I typed into my Artificial Intelligence App (Chat GPT) this instruction:

“I want a speech for an Irish bride and a Kiwi-Australian groom to give at their wedding.”

In 5 seconds, it spat out a speech. Here are some snippets:

“From the moment I met this Irish bride, it was clear that she possessed a spirit as vibrant and captivating as the rolling green hills of the Emerald Isle.”

“Now, let me turn our attention to the dashing groom, a true gentleman hailing from the land down under, and across the Tasman Sea. With his laid-back demeanour, love for adventure, and an accent that makes us all swoon, he brings a unique blend of Australian-New Zealand charm to this celebration.”

I told people at the wedding how AI had helped create the speech and when I read some of AI’s descriptions it prompted a few laughs. People found the style ‘way over the top’.

Artificial Intelligence is pretty good at creating a speech if you’re in a hurry but it doesn’t cut the mustard for a speech that is personal, accurate and specific.

AI can only draw on information about someone that is on the Internet so creating a eulogy for Abraham Lincoln is easy for AI but it is a much greater challenge to write a eulogy for someone about whom there are few details online.

Jack Ryan used ChatGPT to create a eulogy for Martin and he read it out on TikTok. It left people in stitches (read the Comments section!), revealed that “AI still lacks a sense of humanity” and the wording “can sound quite awkward and robotic.”

A comment revealed that some people are using AI to create eulogies which may spark this same response: “Someone did this at my grandmother’s funeral and it was so obvious.”

Check out the article which has links to Jack Ryan’s AI-created eulogy for Martin on TikTok:

Abhiram Sajai, ‘Man shares what it would be like to use ChatGPT for eulogy at funerals and its cracking people up,’ Scoop, April 5, 2024.

Geoff Pound