They booed.

 

At the University of Arizona, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt told 10,000 graduates that AI “will touch every profession, every classroom, every hospital, every laboratory, every person and every relationship you have.”

 

The stadium erupted in boos.

 

The same happened at the University of Central Florida. And at Middle Tennessee State University.

 

These weren’t Luddites rejecting technology. These were young people — many still jobless after 30+ applications — telling the speakers something important:

 

**”Your words are not landing. You’re not talking TO us. You’re talking AT us.”**

 

And here’s what struck me as a professional speaker and speech coach.

 

The speeches weren’t factually wrong. AI WILL reshape every industry. That’s true.

 

But truth alone doesn’t move people.

 

What was missing wasn’t better data or a stronger argument.

 

What was missing was the human element — the one thing AI cannot replicate.

 

I’ve been coaching speakers for over two decades, and I’ve run my own experiments with AI-generated speech scripts.

 

Here’s what I’ve found:

 

AI can write a **Good** speech. With the right prompts, it can even write a **Great** one.

 

But it cannot write an **AbFab** (Absolutely Fantastic) one.

 

Not even close.

 

Here’s why.

 

I recently coached Mai Miyoshi, Japan’s representative at the Mrs. Globe World Competition, competing against 65 representatives from around the world.

 

Her original script was good. Heartfelt. Genuine.

 

We then ran an experiment: we gave ChatGPT all the relevant information about her life and asked it to rewrite the script.

 

The AI version was impressive. Poetic, even. It talked about rainbows beyond past wounds. It wove in her work as a fashion consultant. It was, objectively, a better script than her original.

 

And yet.

 

When I sat with Mai in our coaching session and kept asking deeper questions, something unexpected surfaced.

 

A healer once told her:

 

*”You’ve done well to survive. No one understood you. You’ve been closed off. But if you open up — your true self will be released.”*

 

She wept when she heard those words.

 

Then I noticed a hashtag she used on Instagram: **#GoingMAIway**

 

And she mentioned, almost in passing, that she deeply connected with the song *”This Is Me”* from The Greatest Showman — and had actually danced to it.

 

That’s when it clicked.

 

**Mai isn’t just someone who overcame bullying. She IS Hugh Jackman’s character in The Greatest Showman — the one who sheds light on people who don’t fit in, and sets them free.**

 

No AI would have made that connection. Because no AI was IN that room, listening, feeling, connecting the dots between a healer’s whisper, an Instagram hashtag, and a movie that made her cry.

 

The final script I wrote for her ended like this:

 

*”I want to be YOUR Hugh Jackman, and for many other women who are struggling to belong.*

*I’m Mai Miyoshi. And I’m going MAI way.”*

 

She walked onto the world stage, opened with a Greatest Showman-style jacket that Hugh Jackman wore — and took it off at the line “Now, I’m not scared to be seen anymore. This is me!” — revealing a mirror-sequined dress underneath.

 

Among representatives from 65 countries, she became Top 15.

 

The graduates who booed those AI-era speeches weren’t rejecting the future.

 

They were rejecting words that felt borrowed. Generic. Disconnected from the human being standing at the podium.

 

They were asking for something AI cannot give:

 

**A real person, speaking from their real wounds, with their real One BIG Message®.**

 

In my methodology — the Breakthrough Method™ — I always say:

 

The speaker is not the hero. The audience is.

 

Your job is not to impress them with what you know. Your job is to see them, feel them, and deliver the one message that lands in their heart and moves them to act.

 

AI can optimize your words.

 

But only you can make them *yours*.

 

So before you hand your next speech over to ChatGPT, ask yourself:

 

👉 Does this script contain something only I could say?

 

👉 Is there a wound, a turning point, a moment in my life that no one else has lived — that belongs in this speech?

 

👉 Would my audience boo this — or would they lean in?

 

The gold is already inside you.

 

It just needs to be found. 

 

And I can help you find it.

 

*Natsuyo Lipschutz is a New York-based Keynote Speaker on Cross-Cultural Team Communication Strategy, CSP® (Certified Speaking Professional) — the first Japanese national to hold this designation — and founder of Breakthrough Speaking. She is the author of 6 books and coaches executives, global leaders, and entrepreneurs to speak with clarity, courage, and conviction.*