AI-written speeches: the polite applause and the joke in the group chat

On January 25, 2023, US Congressman Jake Auchincloss took the floor of the House of Representatives and read a speech of about 100 words about an artificial intelligence center linked to the United States and Israel. The text had come out of ChatGPT, from a simple request: 100 words to read on the floor. Afterwards, according to NBC Boston, he remarked: "I bet none of them knew it was written by a computer". We chose to open the series with this line because the same question applies to the speech you gave at your last convention.

Think about your last speech at an event. It may have been the opening of the sales convention, the remarks at the new board's inauguration, the tribute to the employee who retired or the toast at the year end party. If the text went through an AI tool, it probably arrived well written, free of errors, with a beginning, a middle and an end. You read it on the screen, found it correct and went up on stage. Now we want to take you to the other side of the microphone.

The AI speech that looks good on the laptop screen

An AI generated text usually convinces whoever reads it alone, at night, the day before the event. The sentences are fluent, the paragraphs are balanced in length and the expected words show up in the expected places: commitment, purpose, challenges, achievements, the future. With a packed schedule, you look at this finish and conclude it is ready.

Now think about who will be listening. The audience has been sitting for hours, has heard other speeches that day and has heard dozens of similar talks at other events. They also know you: they know how you talk in the hallway, at lunch, at the Monday meeting. When the voice on stage sounds like any other executive, the audience can sense the distance between the person they know and the text they are hearing.

Think about what can happen after your speech. The applause comes at the right time and lasts as long as politeness requires. Hours later, in a WhatsApp group you are not part of, someone may paste a line from your speech and ask whether ChatGPT wrote it. You would probably never know that conversation took place, and that is what makes the risk so hard to measure.

Leaders who said on stage that they had used ChatGPT

Auchincloss had company. On May 31, 2023, the Prime Minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen, read a passage of a speech in Parliament and then revealed that the text "was not written by me, or by any human being", according to the AFP translation published by Exame. She described the tools as "fascinating and terrifying". On the same day, in Italy, Senator Marco Lombardo told the chamber: "The intervention you just heard is not mine", according to a Reuters report reproduced by the Mais Goiás portal. The newspaper La Repubblica recorded the episode as the first speech made by AI in the Italian Senate.

Here in Brazil, the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Eduardo Paes, did something similar in April 2024, at the opening of Impa Tech, at an event with President Lula. According to Poder360, he said he had asked ChatGPT to "prepare a speech for me to read before the President of the Republic". He wrote the other part of the speech himself.

Notice what these episodes have in common. The revelation was part of the performance, was announced by the speaker himself or herself and served to open a conversation about the technology. The reports we consulted record no penalty or mockery against these politicians. In several cases, they also record no reaction at all from the audience, and what the audience actually felt remains an open question.

When AI text is discovered by accident

When AI shows up without warning, the reaction tends to be mockery. In October 2025, a city councilor in Cuiabá published a text that began with the line ChatGPT places at the top of its answers: "Here is the revised and improved version of your text". According to FolhaMax, he deleted the post and published it again, and a comment recorded in the report summed up what usually comes next: "They already took a screenshot!".

In February 2023, a message of solidarity sent by Peabody College, at Vanderbilt University, carried a note at the bottom saying it had been paraphrased from ChatGPT. The students' reaction led to a public apology, according to CBS News. The third article of the series brings together the cases that sparked controversy, and the fifth examines the Vanderbilt message and what it reveals about a team's trust.

For now, keep in mind a pattern that repeats in the reports. Criticism appeared when AI surfaced in messages of empathy or responsibility, when it was discovered by accident or when it was revealed only after the fact. Tribute speeches, inauguration speeches and year end speeches easily fall into the first category.

The uncomfortable question about the speeches you have already given

The research we presented in the second article indicates that people have difficulty reliably identifying a text written by AI. In our view, this finding calls for extra care on your part. The audience judges the speech by the impression it leaves, and the mere suspicion of artificiality is enough to affect your image, even when nobody can prove anything.

Now, honestly, take stock with these questions:

• When was the last time someone quoted a line of yours after an event?
• Did anyone in the audience come up to talk to you about a story you told on stage?
• If your name were erased from the text, would anyone be able to say the speech was yours?
• Can you repeat today the central idea of your last speech without looking at the paper?

If the answers left you uneasy, that unease is well founded. A speech on the podium is the moment when you lend your own voice to an idea in front of people who will judge the idea and you at the same time.

A text that could have been said by anyone, at any company, rarely reaches that point on the listener's face. It fulfills the protocol, gets the expected applause and usually fades from memory before the coffee break.

What the Speeches on the podium series will show

In the twelve articles of this series, we bring together reports, studies and documented cases about leaders' speeches at conventions, ceremonies, graduations, inaugurations and tributes. The second article presents the research on the audience's ability to notice an AI text. The third gathers the cases that sparked controversy in Brazil and abroad. The fourth shows the clichés the audience recognizes from the very first sentence, and the fifth deals with the effect of an AI written message from a leader on the team's trust.

From the sixth to the eighth article, we get into the events where a generic text weighs most: conventions and year end parties, graduations, inaugurations and tributes, along with the value of the personal story no tool knows. The ninth deals with writing meant to be spoken, with rhythm, pauses and breathing. The tenth shows how you can use AI in your preparation without handing over your voice, the eleventh offers a checklist to review the text before you go on stage, and the twelfth explains how working with a speechwriter works.