The AI Wedding Speech

Hamid has three days to write his best-man speech, and he has no ideas. His oldest friend is getting married on Saturday, and the whole family expects something funny. On Wednesday night, he opens an AI assistant. He types: "Write a speech for my friend and his bride. Make it warm and funny."

Four seconds later, the speech is ready. It is smooth and polished. It is full of phrases like "a journey of love" and "two hearts, one destiny". Hamid is impressed. He reads it aloud to his reflection in the bathroom mirror. Nothing sounds wrong until the second paragraph.

"I will never forget the day they met in Valmora," the speech says.

Hamid stops. His friend and Simona did not meet in Valmora. They met at a bus stop in Harbor Town, in the rain, when she lent him her umbrella. The speech also says that his friend is a lifelong lover of hiking. His friend has never owned a pair of boots. He complains when the walk to the car is longer than a minute.

The more Hamid reads, the less it sounds like anyone he knows. "I could give this speech at any wedding in the world," he mutters. If he reads it on Saturday, nobody will laugh. The groom's grandmother will notice the wrong city immediately.

He closes the laptop and tells himself he will fix it tomorrow. Tomorrow turns into Friday, and by Friday night he is still staring at the screen. Finally, he pushes the computer away and takes a pen and a piece of paper from the drawer.

This time, he does not ask for anything smooth. He writes down what really happened. He writes about the evening his friend fell asleep at his own birthday party. A paper hat was still on his head. He writes about the umbrella, which his friend still carries everywhere, even in summer. He crosses out three lines and writes them again. At one in the morning, he finally has a speech that sounds like his own voice.

At the wedding, Hamid stands up with the paper shaking a little in his hand. "Eight years ago, it was raining at a bus stop in Harbor Town," he begins. Simona covers her mouth. The groom laughs so hard that he knocks over his glass. By the end, even the grandmother is wiping her eyes.

Later, while the band is playing, Hamid's phone buzzes in his pocket. It is a message from the assistant: "How did the speech go?"

He smiles and types back: "Very well. I wrote it myself."