My cousin gave a wonderful speech for his father’s 60th birthday party last month. It had everything you would want from such a tribute — emotion, wit, sincerity, revelation. There I was, very much enjoying sitting back listening to it, chuckling at the just-embarrassing-enough jokes and sipping on my champagne self-restrainedly so the glass wasn’t totally empty by the time we got to the toast.
But suddenly an unpleasant, dispiriting feeling washed over me that sucked much of the joy out of my experience. Wasn’t it all a bit too perfect? Where did my young cousin learn how to write a speech like that? Had he had some artificially generated assistance?
I walked up to him afterwards and the words burst out of me before I had the chance to check my manners. “Brilliant speech,” I said. “Did you get some help from ChatGPT?”