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It felt like a moment straight from a Nancy Meyers movie. We were in Oregon wine country, inside a rustic-chic barn that reeked of stealth wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This location is ideal,” I remarked to the groom-to-be. He moved closer as if sharing a secret: “I discovered it on ChatGPT.”

My smile was courteous as he detailed how AI tools helped in the wedding preparations. (A human wedding planner was eventually brought in.) I replied politely. Inside, however, I resolved: if my future spouse approached to me with wedding input courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Contemporary Dating Dealbreakers: AI Use.

Many individuals have standard romantic non-negotiables. Doesn’t smoke, is a cat person, desires kids. Over the past few months, as alarms of an approaching AI-induced apocalypse have flooded my social media and social conversations, I’ve developed a new one. I refuse to date someone who uses ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program really, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the dominant and thus the object of my scorn.)

People often ask the “what if” scenarios. What if I use it for my job, but I hate it otherwise? What if I use it to assist people? How about I only use it as a editing tool – I’d never use it to “write” anything. To all that I say: there are people out there for you. But I am not one of them.

From Disgust to Political Position.

The term “getting the ick” refers to that sensation of being suddenly disgusted. Part of having an ick is not really understanding why you found someone’s behavior so unseemly. For example, I once got the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. At first, my ChatGPT dislike felt like a simple ick, a kneejerk feeling of revulsion that lacked any clear reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even using ChatGPT for apparently simple tasks like designing a workout plan or picking an outfit feels like a deliberate political act. We are aware that the power-hungry tech drains our water supply and increases electricity bills. It is marketed as a placebo for human connection; lonely, disconnected people discovering companionship or even falling in love with code is not as much a science fiction scenario as it is just the way things go now. The megarich tech executives in charge of all this think in terms of profit first and people second.

Sure, ChatGPT can generate your shopping list. But does that personal benefit offset the wider negative impact it causes?

A Romantic Disaster: If Your Date Uses ChatGPT.

As if it had not done enough already, ChatGPT has somehow made dating even worse. A good friend recently told me that she went out with a man, and in the morning suggested they get breakfast together. He pulled out his phone, opened ChatGPT, and asked for restaurant suggestions. Why get close to someone who delegates decisions, including the fun ones like choosing where to eat? If someone is so lazy they’ll hit up ChatGPT to plan a first date, consider how minimal effort they’ll spend six months in.

I just cannot imagine forming a deep, lasting connection with someone who regularly interacts with a technology that’s kneecapping our collective attention spans and perhaps signaling total apocalypse. Intellectual curiosity, creativity, originality – I probably won’t find what I prize in someone who thinks “productivity” means asking an app to summarize a movie plot so they don’t have to spend their time, you know, watching it.

Consider whether your relationship preference actually aligns with your long-term objectives.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based relationship coach, she does use ChatGPT for specific purposes but is not endorse it. In the past six months or so, she says “every one” of her clients has approached her complaining about “chatfishing” or people who use AI to generate everything on their dating apps – all the way down to the DMs they send. I inquired Jackson if my strike against ChatGPT chumps was too strict. She said no, proceed and evaluate, though it might reduce my dating pool – about 10% of the adult population now utilizes the tech.

“Ask yourself if your preference is truly supporting your long-term goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would assume that’s one of your values, and it’s important to find someone whose beliefs are aligned with yours.”

Others Who Share the ChatGPT Aversion.

The dislike for AI extends beyond the dating realm. Ana Pereira, 26, resides in Brooklyn and works in sound for various live music venues across the city. She dreams about accessing her phone settings and deactivating AI features on all her apps, though tech platforms from Google to Spotify make it nearly impossible to disable. Pereira believes that using ChatGPT “demonstrates such a lack of initiative”.

“It’s like you are unable to think for yourself, and you have to rely on an app for that,” she said.

A recent friend’s breakup was particularly ugly. She supported one of them after learning the other went to ChatGPT, a notoriously awful therapy substitute, not their partner, when they wanted to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they didn’t want to endure any difficult human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to process something and move on, which is not how things work.”

Eventually, I found not manage it on my own. I had grown too dependent on AI for the basic work.

Richard Barnes, a 31-year-old marine biologist and server in Hawaii, has similar views. “I am not sure if I would think differently about someone who uses ChatGPT, but I would be like, ‘come on,’” he said. “You shouldn’t have to rely on it to make a grocery list. Your life is likely not that hard. We can make the list together.”

Well-Known Personalities and Tech Professionals Voicing Concerns.

Guillermo del Toro’s statement that he’d “rather die” over using generative AI garnered significant attention. Similarly, SZA’s Instagram stories tirade against the tech cautioning about “environmental racism” and showing fear over users who are “codependent on a machine”. The same goes for when Simu Liu, Alison Roman, Céline Dion, Emily Blunt, and others make statements that are skeptical of AI in their respective industries. I believe these quotes go viral for a reason: people agree with them.

Even, to an degree, the people who power the tech industry. Last month, Pinterest introduced a filter that lets users disable AI content. Meta lets users hide, but not entirely deactivate, comparable slop on Instagram. Sources indicated that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley professionals won’t use AI to write their code.

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