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It felt like a scene lifted from a Nancy Meyers film. I found myself in Oregon wine country, inside a rustic-chic barn that smelled of stealth wealth, for a close friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This location is perfect,” I remarked to the groom-to-be. He moved closer as if revealing a secret: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

I smiled tightly as this man explained using artificial intelligence for the initial stages of organizing the wedding. (They also hired a human wedding planner.) I responded courteously. Internally, however, I decided: if my future spouse came to me with wedding input from ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

The New Dating Non-Negotiable.

Some people have common relationship dealbreakers. Won’t smoke, is a cat person, desires kids. Over the past few months, as alarms of an impending AI-induced doomsday have flooded my social media and party conversations, I’ve come up with a fresh one. I will not date someone who employs ChatGPT. (Or any generative AI program really, but with countless weekly users, ChatGPT is by far the most popular and thus the object of my scorn.)

I’ve encountered all the “what if’s”. What if I use it for my job, but I dislike it otherwise? Imagine if I use it to help people? What if I only use it as a proofreading tool – I’d never use it to “write” anything. To all that I say: there are individuals out there for you. But I am not one of them.

When a Simple Turn-Off Turns Into a Moral Issue.

The phrase “getting the ick” describes that sensation of being unexpectedly turned off. A key aspect of having an ick is not fully understanding why you considered someone’s behavior so off-putting. For instance, I once felt the ick watching a man drink a smoothie from a straw. At first, my ChatGPT dislike felt like a mere ick, a kneejerk feeling of disgust that had no any solid reasoning.

Now, in late 2025, even relying on ChatGPT for seemingly innocent tasks like designing a workout plan or picking an outfit feels like a deliberate moral decision. We are aware that the energy-intensive tech drains our water supply and hikes electricity bills. It is sold as a substitute 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 bros in control of all this think in terms of profit first and people second.

OK, so ChatGPT assists you write your grocery list. Does your personal convenience outweigh the societal harm it can cause?

How ChatGPT Ruins Romance and Intimacy.

As if it hadn’t done enough already, ChatGPT has somehow made dating even worse. A good friend lately told me that she spent a night 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 outsources decisions, including the enjoyable ones like picking where to eat? If someone is so lazy they’ll hit up ChatGPT to plan a first date, consider how little effort they’ll spend six months in.

It’s difficult to see myself establishing a meaningful bond with a person who often uses a tool that erodes concentration and might bring about societal collapse. Inquisitiveness, originality, originality – I likely won’t find what I value in someone who thinks “productivity” means asking an app to summarize a movie plot so they don’t have to waste their time, you know, watching it.

Ask yourself if your [dating] choice is truly supporting your long-term goals.

According to Ali Jackson, a New York-based dating coach, she may use ChatGPT for specific tasks but doesn’t promote it. In the past six months or so, she says “every one” of her clients has come her expressing concern about “chatfishing” or people who use AI to create everything on their dating apps – all the way down to the DMs they send. I asked Jackson if my rule against ChatGPT chumps was too harsh. She said no, go forth 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 future goals,” Jackson said. “In your case, I would assume that’s one of your values, and it’s important to find someone whose values are aligned with yours.”

More People Voicing ChatGPT Apprehensions.

Other people experience the AI ick, and not just when it comes to dating. Ana Pereira, 26, lives 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 opt out. Pereira believes that using ChatGPT “demonstrates such a laziness”.

“It’s like you can’t think for yourself, and you have to depend on an app for that,” she said.

A recent friend’s split was particularly messy. She supported one of them after learning the other turned to ChatGPT, a infamously poor therapy substitute, not their partner, when they needed to talk about their feelings. “It’s like they refused to sit through any difficult human feelings,” she said. “They just wanted to deal with something and move on, which is not how things work.”

Before long, I could not manage it on my own. I had become too dependent on AI for the basic work.

Richard Barnes, who is 31 and works as a marine biologist and restaurant server in Hawaii, is similarly skeptical. “I don’t know if I would think differently about someone who uses ChatGPT, but I would be like, ‘come on,’” he said. “You don’t need to depend 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 Speaking Out.

Guillermo del Toro’s statement that he’d “rather die” over using generative AI garnered significant coverage. 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 issued statements that are critical of AI in their respective industries. I think these quotes spread widely for a cause: people agree with them.

This attitude is present even among those in the tech sector. Last month, Pinterest introduced a filter that lets users turn off AI content. Meta lets users mute, but not entirely deactivate, similar content on Instagram. Sources suggested that “cursor resistance” is on the rise, as some Silicon Valley techies refuse to use AI to write their code.

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