'AITA for telling off my stepmom after she wrote a speech for my grandma's funeral using Chat GPT?'
"AITA for telling off my stepmom after she wrote a speech for my grandma's funeral using Chat GPT?"
I (21f), 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 passing 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 (47f) 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 chat gpt'. I hate AI and Chat GPT and am very political, which she knows, but she said it anyway. The concept of someone using A MACHINE to write a 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 Chat GPT 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 chat gpt 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.
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. AITA?
Here's what people had to say to OP:
therealdanfogelberg wrote:
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.
TRQ711 wrote:
ESH, but gentle, I think. Your anger seems justified to me. It was disrespectful to your grandma’s memory for your stepmom to have a machine write something and pass it off as her own. But it was petty for you to publicly shame her for it. I think if you had given your stepmom the cold shoulder in private, that might have been more appropriate.
Really though, the question you should ask yourself: would your sweet and kind grandmother have done what you did? Would she approve of you having done it? Your stepmom sucks here either way, but I think that question is the best measure for determining if you’re an asshole too.
Necessary-Penalty300 wrote:
YTA I understand that you are hurt by the passing of your grandmother but really that was the place and time to embarrass your step mother? You won't use Chat gpt but you will shame your grandmother by acting like a CHILD??!!!! WOWWWWWWW.
eury13 wrote:
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.
O-Ahem-O wrote:
OP, why is your stepmum have a speaking slot - and why isn't your father saying anything. What your grandma meant to you, isn't the same for them. They didn't grow up with grandma, she married in after. I question why she was speaking in the first place.
Big-imagination4377 wrote:
YTA. Everyone grieves differently and everyone has different strengths. It's ok for her to need help writing her speech. It's okay 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.
chittychittyb wrote:
ESH. Using ChatGPT was wrong, but you messed up by publicly shaming her at a funeral.
TiffanyBlue07 wrote:
You’re insufferable…bragging about how your eulogy brought people to tears. It’s a funeral, not a competition. Your step mother was right. Expressing feelings into words isn’t easy for everyone. She gave chap gpt what she wanted to convey, I’m sure she read it and possibly made changes. Although by the sounds of your post, you’re absolute perfection at everything you do. Right?