The emergence of artificial intelligence can only be described as a dangerous convenience.
Applications like ChatGPT have proven a great help to many people, assisting them polishing their work or tidying a document.
However, some people have become somewhat too reliant on it.
While others have become experts at detecting work that is anything but authentic.
Redditor away-with-the-willow and her stepmother were both recently asked to speak at a somewhat somber occasion.
Much to the original poster (OP)’s horror, she learned her stepmother had used ChatGPT to write her entire speech.
A decision the OP felt deserved consequences.
Wondering if she was out of line, the OP took to the subReddit “Am I The A**hole” (AITA), where she asked fellow Redditors:
“AITA for telling off my stepmom after she wrote a speech for my grandma’s funeral using chatGPT?”
The OP explained why she felt the need to put her stepmother in her place:
“I (21 F[emale]), lost my grandma after a long battle with dementia recently.”
“She was a beautiful person, one of the kindest and most calm people I’ve ever known, and I (and my family) adored her.”
“I spent the two weeks after her death poring over my own speech, trying to work out the proper words to express how much I cared about her and how wonderful she was.”
“A few days before the funeral, I expressed to my stepmom (47 F) that I was having trouble writing my speech, and as she already had hers done, I wanted advice on how she’d structured it.”
“For context, this is my dad’s mother, not hers, so she was writing about half a page about her mother-in-law.”
“She turned to me with a big smile and said, ‘Just use ChatGPT. ‘”
“I hate AI and ChatGPT and am very political, which she knows, but she said it anyway.”
“The concept of someone using A MACHINE to write a goddam FUNERAL SPEECH had me seeing red.”
“I got angry and told her she had to rewrite it, that it wasn’t fair to my grandma to have a machine pretend to know the wonderfully complex human that she was, and that using ChatGPT was a lazy and unkind thing to do.”
“She got very upset at me and said she was using it as a tool, that words don’t come to everyone as easily as they do with me etc.”
“She kind of ignored me for a few days before the funeral.”
“At the funeral, my speech was after my stepmom’s.”
“She got up to the mic and read her speech, and it was really obvious it was AI, super soulless and impersonal.”
“I’m sure anyone under thirty in the room clocked it, but it was mostly my grandma’s friends in the crowd who had no idea.”
“I was so angry at her decision to spend no time or energy stringing a few words together that when I got up to the microphone after her, I said ‘thanks, ChatGPT, for writing that speech for her’ and then read my own speech.”
“And what do you know, my human-written speech actually brought the room to tears.”   Â
“But obviously my stepmom was upset at the slight, and so was my dad, who said I was being arrogant and selfish for saying that in front of everyone and embarrassing my stepmom.”
“I just can’t fathom thinking about someone as incredible as my grandma and deciding that you’d rather let a machine write your speech than spend any energy trying to write something personal.”
“She was an angel, she helped my parents raise me, she was always supportive of my dad and stepmom and bought them gifts and clothes and furniture until dementia took her body, and even then she was sweet and interested in our lives and always happy to see us enter the memory ward.”
“I don’t think it’s too much to ask that my stepmom spends an extra few hours trying to write a speech herself.”
“But my dad and stepmom are really upset at me, so I don’t know anymore.”
“The speech wasn’t personal- like she didn’t go to chat got and say ‘here are my fav memories, write a speech’ it could’ve been about anyone, which i think was partly why it made me so angry in the moment.”
“AITA?”
Fellow Redditors weighed in on where they believed the OP fell in this particular situation, by declaring:
- NTA – Not The A**hole
- YTA – You’re The A**hole
- NAH – No A**holes Here
- ESH – Everyone Sucks Here
The OP received little to no sympathy from the Reddit community, who largely agreed that the OP was the a**hole for her behavior.
While many understood the OP’s anger at her stepmother, everyone agreed that calling her out during her grandmother’s funeral was otherwise out of line and inappropriate:
“YTA.”
“You managed to turn your grandmother’s funeral into a competition between yourself and your stepmother.”- Individual_Ad_9213
“YTA for making your grandmother’s funeral about yourself.”
“The dig at your stepmom was uncalled for and immature.”
“How does your dad feel?”
“If he doesn’t care, let it go.”
“That was his MOM.”- Kmart-Shopper-5107
“YTA.”
“Everyone grieves differently and everyone has different strengths.”
“It’s ok for her to need help writing her speech.”
“It’s ok for you not to need that same assistance.”
“But you turned your grandmother’s funeral into airing your grievances with your stepmother instead of honoring the woman you said was so special.”- Big-Imagination4377
“YTA.”
“I understand that you are hurt by the passing of your grandmother, but really, was that the place and time to embarrass your stepmother?”
“You won’t use Chat GPT, but you will shame your grandmother by acting like a CHILD??!!!!”
“WOWWWWWWW.”- Necessary-Penalty300
“YTA.”
“You’re welcome to feel disappointed that your stepmom used ChatGPT to help write her eulogy, but to call her out at the funeral at the start of your own eulogy is selfish and stupid.”
“You took a moment to honor your grandmother, and you sullied it with pettiness over something that is really, really not a big deal.”- eury13
“YTA.”
“I’ve been to about a million funerals- all of my grandparents, both of my parents, most of my aunts and uncles.”
“If anyone said something like that, I would have been furious.”
“It’s not about you or how you feel about AI (for the record, I hate it too).”
“It’s about the people there who came to mourn.”
“Your comment undoubtedly made many people feel extremely uncomfortable, and you said it to make precisely ONE person feel better – you.”
“A funeral is neither the time nor the place for your righteous indignation.”- therealdanfogelberg
“YTA.”
“This was not the time or place for cheap shots.”
“Not everyone knows how to write a speech, if ChatGPT got her through the situation, whatever.”- FishermanHoliday1767
“YTA.”
“You could have addressed this privately.”
“Could have and very, very much should have.”
“21?”
“OP, this would have earned a hard YTA from me if you were sixteen.”
“YTA, YTA, YTA.”
“Public apology stat. And even that won’t even begin to make it right.”
“Jeez.”
“You messed up, OP.”- Luhdk
“YTA.”
“Had you not chosen to add in the thanks to ChatGPT, it would have been all good.”
“You made a conscious decision to be TA.”- maxx4700
“YTA.”
“You used your eulogy time to insult someone.”
“Unreal. Not only that, but you also turned it into some type of weird contest on who had the best speech.”
“And to the people who can’t understand why a daughter-in-law would speak at a funeral, go heal your trauma.”
“For those who can’t understand why her dad couldn’t speak at his mother’s funeral, you understand very little about how grief can affect people.”
“Good for you if you could stand up and provide a eulogy for your parent.”
“Not everyone can or wants to.”- Electrical_Sky5833
“I don’t believe this actually happened, which makes it YTA.”
“On the off-chance it did happen, you’re still TA.”- Spirited-Remote4313
“YTA.”
“I’m very sorry for your loss, but you don’t have the right to tell someone else how to write their eulogy, and you definitely don’t have the right to use the podium to humiliate someone at a funeral.”
“I understand you’re grieving, but you hijacked your grandma’s funeral to air your grudge.”
“That is disrespectful to everyone involved.”- StyraxCarillon
Mandy did, however, agree that the OP’s stepmother deserved to be called out, even if they didn’t think she should have been called out in the way the OP did:
“ESH.”
“Using ChatGPT was wrong, but you f*cked up by publicly shaming her at a funeral.”-chittychittyb
It’s become increasingly easy to tell when someone uses AI to help them with their writing.
With this in mind, it’s entirely likely that those in attendance at the funeral would have deduced how the OP’s stepmother wrote her eulogy without the OP’s assistance.
Even so, frustrated as the OP was, and had every right to be, she still should have kept her focus on her own eulogy, and not her stepmother’s.
Her actions likely left a bad taste in the mouths of everyone in attendance.