Should You Use an A.I. Chatbot to Write Your Wedding Vows or Wedding Toast?

… and will anyone be able to tell the difference if you do? 

 

 

What does a chatbot know about love? And should you let one speak for you on the wedding day? 

 

AMM sat down with the newest chatbot in town – ChatGPT – to see if the program could be helpful when writing custom wedding vows and toasts. 

 

The results were about what we expected… We’ll cover them in detail below.

 

But first, a little backstory…

 

Since the launch of ChatGPT by OpenAI in November of last year, there’s been endless chatter about the strength, limitations, and undeniable creepiness of using AI and NLP (artificial intelligence and natural language processing) to create human-sounding content and conversation. 

 

Students are using AI programs to write essays; advertisers are using them to produce online content and promotional copy; and mental health apps are even using it to emulate therapists. Wedding professionals are joining in too, by using AI to write wedding speeches, toasts, and vows. 

 

AMM first wrote about the possibilities of AI to write wedding scripts in May of 2021, when GPT-3 Chatbot took off: Would you let an Artificial Intelligence write your wedding ceremony? We speculated then that the tool could be used to inspire simple wedding ceremony scripts and readings for first-time wedding officiants, couples, and guests. 

 

Now, a wedding business called ToastWiz is using an industry-focused GPT-3 bot to do just that – offering three ‘original’ wedding speeches for around $30. And a wedding planning platform called Joy offers a similar service called “Wedding Writer’s Block,” powered by OpenAI, to help couples write a first draft of their writing vows, toasts, or speeches.

 

But is using a chatbot worth the effort? What do you really get for your time and money? Does the end result really sound natural? 

 

And will someone be able to tell you didn’t write it? 

 

 

What does an AI powered chatbot know about love and marriage? Let's find out! 

 

Here’s what we learned…

 

Will anyone be able to tell you used a chatbot to write your vows? After spending some time ‘conversing’ with ChatGPT ourselves, we can say that…

 

Yeah, people will probably know you didn’t write your own vows. 

 

They might not know a computer wrote them, but we bet they’ll know you didn’t. What’s even more important is that you will know that you didn’t write them, and that inauthenticity is sure to bring down the energy of your big day. So as you’ll see below, some jobs are best left to humans.

 

Why? The stuff ChatGPT wrote for us was relatively generic and bland, unless we specifically prompted it to use slang or casual language. And even then, it just sounded like it was trying too hard.

 

 

These suggestions are sweet enough, but they're fairly generic.

 

 

And this suggestion was trying too hard... "I love you more than Kanye loves Kanye"?? Hmm... We do love a partner who knows how to help us through the hangry times, but we'll leave it up to you to decide if these are a good fit for your ceremony. 

 

 

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It doesn't earn many points for creativity, but it is capable of generating original poetry and readings (although it won’t be winning a Pulitzer any time soon.) 

 

Related: 12 Love Poems for Your Wedding Ceremony

 

 

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Not a terrible poem, tbh... It does rhyme after all! 

 

Proof that ChatGPT can compose some original wedding poems and readings. Good to know!

 

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And we were very happy to see that ChatGPT offered whole-hearted support for same-sex marriage and blended families! (Even when we implied that we might not, but only to ensure its inclusivity credentials.) 

 

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We're thrilled to see that OpenAI's ChatGPT showing enthusiastic support for same-sex marriage!

 

 

We even tested the chatbot to make sure it was consistently supportive of LGBTQ+ marriages. Luckily it passed this inclusivity check!

 

 

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After spending about 10 minutes with ChatGPT, it appears you’d have to dedicate at least an hour or more ‘teaching’ the program about your relationship, likes and dislikes, and speech patterns, before it would be able to emulate you in an authentic way. 

 

This means you’d have to share a lot of details about yourself with a computer program, which brings up valid concerns about privacy.  

 

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We gave the AI chatbot a few details about a couple's love story to see how it would do with writing personalized wedding vows. The result? Not awful, but not great. 

 

 

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Programs like ChatGPT work by taking the information you provide and combining it with content it scrapes and analyzes from every corner of the internet. It searches online wedding scripts, famous poems, popular readings and more, and synthesizes that content with the details you offer, to create something ‘new’ and ‘original’ just for you… Kind of like a digital ghostwriter.

 

But because chatbots aren’t human, they’ll probably always lack the nuance and warmth that your true voice will lend to your vows. 

 

 

A cure for writer’s block… with a price

 

That said, we do see a useful role for ChatGPT: Curing writer’s block and generating a first draft. 

 

If you have absolutely zero idea where to start writing your vows, speech, or wedding toast, and just need someone (or something) to give you a place to start, then a chatbot will probably work for you. 

 

Once you’ve got your AI-generated first draft in hand, you can go back through and rewrite it using your own words, humor, and personal stories. 

 

Still, if you’re just looking for inspiration, there are plenty of other places to start that don’t require you to share a bunch of intimate details from your life with a faceless computer program (and its data-mining corporate backers)... 

 

Check out our free Wedding Ceremony Script Library, an entire section of the Blog dedicated to Wedding Vows, and curl up on the couch with some classic wedding movies. You’ll find just the right words to express your love in no time!

 

Better than a chatbot!

Check out these free AMM resources to cure your wedding writer’s block:

 

 

• AMM’s Free Wedding Ceremony Script Library

 

• A Template for Writing Your Own Vows

 

• Wedding Vows Inspiration & Examples

 

• Sweet Examples of Wedding Readings & Poems 

 

• Inspiration from Classic Wedding Movies 

 

• The Secret to a Perfect Wedding Officiant Speech (With Examples)

 

 

 

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